counting pulses from a Mechanical water meter with Two inputs - c

I want to count the number of pulses from a mechanical water meter using an STM32L Microcontroller. The outputs of the water meter are from TWO REED switches.
The operation of the Switches is explained as follows:
the two Reed switches would be operated "ON" OR "OFF" respectively by the magnet fitted to the pointer or gear during its running on the register, but never "ON" at the same time.
The two Reed switches operate two "ON" and two "OFF" in one round of the pointer/the gear means one signal output.
How can I read in the two inputs and be able to count the number of pulses in C? Note: 1 pulse = 100 liters.

I'm not sure what you're actually asking because what you seem to be asking is so simple whether you poll or use edge triggered interrupts. The main issue is debouncing the switch signals. For debouncing you should determine the maximum flow rate of your meter, which you don't really care about directly, but it will let you calculate the maximum switch period. Use some significant portion of the minimum on or off time to perform your debounce.

The point of having two switches 180 degree apart, such that only one switch can be made at a time, is that no switch debouncing is needed.
In practice the code would need to be more sophisticated, but the basic algorithm can be represented by this:
while(1) {
while(switchA() == 0); // wait for switch A to be made
litres += 100; // clock up unit volume
display(litres); // tell the user
while(switchB() == 0); // wait for switch B to be made
}
It does not matter how many pulses come from a reed switch, when it is near the magnet - all but the first pulse will be ignored, because the algorithm is then looking at the other switch.

Related

Switch Debouncing Logic in C

I came across this code by Ganssle regarding switch debouncing. The code seems pretty efficient, and the few questions I have maybe very obvious, but I would appreciate clarification.
Why does he check 10 msec for button press and 100 msec for button release. Can't he just check 10 msec for press and release?
Is polling this function every 5 msec from main the most effecient way to execute it or should I check for an interrupt in the pin and when there is a interrupt change the pin to GPI and go into the polling routine and after we deduce the value switch the pin back to interrupt mode?
#define CHECK_MSEC 5 // Read hardware every 5 msec
#define PRESS_MSEC 10 // Stable time before registering pressed
#define RELEASE_MSEC 100 // Stable time before registering released
// This function reads the key state from the hardware.
extern bool_t RawKeyPressed();
// This holds the debounced state of the key.
bool_t DebouncedKeyPress = false;
// Service routine called every CHECK_MSEC to
// debounce both edges
void DebounceSwitch1(bool_t *Key_changed, bool_t *Key_pressed)
{
static uint8_t Count = RELEASE_MSEC / CHECK_MSEC;
bool_t RawState;
*Key_changed = false;
*Key_pressed = DebouncedKeyPress;
RawState = RawKeyPressed();
if (RawState == DebouncedKeyPress) {
// Set the timer which will allow a change from the current state.
if (DebouncedKeyPress) Count = RELEASE_MSEC / CHECK_MSEC;
else Count = PRESS_MSEC / CHECK_MSEC;
} else {
// Key has changed - wait for new state to become stable.
if (--Count == 0) {
// Timer expired - accept the change.
DebouncedKeyPress = RawState;
*Key_changed=true;
*Key_pressed=DebouncedKeyPress;
// And reset the timer.
if (DebouncedKeyPress) Count = RELEASE_MSEC / CHECK_MSEC;
else Count = PRESS_MSEC / CHECK_MSEC;
}
}
}
Why does he check 10 msec for button press and 100 msec for button release.
As the blog post says, "Respond instantly to user input." and "A 100ms delay is quite noticeable".
So, the main reason seems to be to emphasize that the make-debounce should be kept short so that the make is registered "immediately" by human sense, and that the break debounce is less time sensitive.
This is also supported by a paragraph near the end of the post: "As I described in the April issue, most switches seem to exhibit bounce rates under 10ms. Coupled with my observation that a 50ms response seems instantaneous, it's reasonable to pick a debounce period in the 20 to 50ms range."
In other words, the code in the example is much more important than the example values, and that the proper values to be used depends on the switches used; you're supposed to decide those yourself, based on the particulars of your specific use case.
Can't he just check 10 msec for press and release?
Sure, why not? As he wrote, it should work, even though he wrote (as quoted above) that he prefers a bit longer debounce periods (20 to 50 ms).
Is polling this function every 5 msec from main the most effecient way to execute it
No. As the author wrote, "All of these algorithms assume a timer or other periodic call that invokes the debouncer." In other words, this is just one way to implement software debouncing, and the shown examples are based on a regular timer interrupt, that's all.
Also, there is nothing magical about the 5 ms; as the author says, "For quick response and relatively low computational overhead I prefer a tick rate of a handful of milliseconds. One to five milliseconds is ideal."
or should I check for an interrupt in the pin and when there is a interrupt change the pin to GPI and go into the polling routine and after we deduce the value switch the pin back to interrupt mode?
If you implement that in code, you'll find that it is rather nasty to have an interrupt that blocks the normal running of the code for 10 - 50ms at a time. It is okay if checking the input pin state is the only thing being done, but if the hardware does anything else, like update a display, or flicker some blinkenlights, your debouncing routine in the interrupt handler will cause noticeable jitter/stutter. In other words, what you suggest, is not a practical implementation.
The way the periodic timer interrupt based software debouncing routines (shown in the original blog post, and elsewhere) work, they take only a very short amount of time, just a couple of dozen cycles or so, and do not interrupt other code for any significant amount of time. This is simple, and practical.
You can combine a periodic timer interrupt and an input pin (state change) interrupt, but since the overhead of many of the timer-interrupt-only -based software debounces is tiny, it typically is not worth the effort trying to combine the two -- the code gets very, very complicated, and complicated code (especially on an embedded device) tends to be hard/expensive to maintain.
The only case I can think of (but I'm only a hobbyist, not an EE by any means!) is if you wanted to minimize power use for e.g. battery powered operation, and used the input pin interrupt to bring the device to partial or full power mode from sleep, or similar.
(Actually, if you also have a millisecond or sub-millisecond counter (not necessarily based on an interrupt, but possibly a cycle counter or similar), you can use the input pin interrupt and the cycle counter to update the input state on the first change, then desensitize it for a specific duration afterwards, by storing the cycle counter value at the state change. You do need to handle counter overflow, though, to avoid the situation where a long ago event seems to have happened just a short time ago, due to counter overflowing.)
I found Lundin's answer quite informative, and decided to edit my answer to show my own suggestion for software debouncing. This might be especially interesting if you have very limited RAM, but lots of buttons multiplexed, and you want to be able to respond to key presses and releases with minimum delay.
Do note that I do not wish to imply this is "best" in any sense of the world; I only want you to show one approach I haven't seen often used, but which might have some useful properties in some use cases. Here, too, the number of scan cycles (milliseconds) the input changes are ignored (10 for make/off-to-ON, 10 for break/on-to-OFF) are just example values; use an oscilloscope or trial-and-error to find the best values in your use case. If this is an approach you find more suitable to your use case than the other myriad alternatives, that is.
The idea is simple: use a single byte per button to record the state, with the least significant bit describing the state, and the seven other bits being the desensitivity (debounce duration) counter. Whenever a state change occurs, the next change is only considered a number of scan cycles later.
This has the benefit of responding to changes immediately. It also allows different make-debounce and break-debounce durations (during which the pin state is not checked).
The downside is that if your switches/inputs have any glitches (misreadings outside the debounce duration), they show up as clear make/break events.
First, you define the number of scans the inputs are desensitized after a break, and after a make. These range from 0 to 127, inclusive. The exact values you use depend entirely on your use case; these are just placeholders.
#define ON_ATLEAST 10 /* 0 to 127, inclusive */
#define OFF_ATLEAST 10 /* 0 to 127, inclusive */
For each button, you have one byte of state, variable state below; initialized to 0. Let's say (PORT & BIT) is the expression you use to test that particular input pin, evaluating to true (nonzero) for ON, and false (zero) for OFF. During each scan (in your timer interrupt), you do
if (state > 1)
state -= 2;
else
if ( (!(PORT & BIT)) != (!state) ) {
if (state)
state = OFF_ATLEAST*2 + 0;
else
state = ON_ATLEAST*2 + 1;
}
At any point, you can test the button state using (state & 1). It will be 0 for OFF, and 1 for ON. Furthermore, if (state > 1), then this button was recently turned ON (if state & 1) or OFF (if state & 0) and is therefore not sensitive to changes in the input pin state.
In addition to the accepted answer, if you just wish to poll a switch from somewhere every n ms, there is no need for all of the obfuscation and complexity from that article. Simply do this:
static bool prev=false;
...
/*** execute every n ms ***/
bool btn_pressed = (PORT & button_mask) != 0;
bool reliable = btn_pressed==prev;
prev = btn_pressed;
if(!reliable)
{
btn_pressed = false; // btn_pressed is not yet reliable, treat as not pressed
}
// <-- here btn_pressed contains the state of the switch, do something with it
This is the simplest way to de-bounce a switch. For mission-critical applications, you can use the very same code but add a simple median filter for the 3 or 5 last samples.
As noted in the article, the electro-mechanical bounce of switches is most often less than 10ms. You can easily measure the bouncing with an oscilloscope, by connecting the switch between any DC supply and ground (in series with a current-limiting resistor, preferably).

How to avoid timer stacking

I'm sorry if his question has already been asked in some way.
I'm currently re-writing a vibration driver in a Linux kernel. The reason why I changed it was due to overly strong vibrations caused by gaining a specific velocity of the vibration motor. To work that around I've implemented a PWM like controller that simply stops the motor at a specific time before reaching it's max acceleration, finally it keeps repeating this action.
There is one big issue that is mainly noticeable when using the keyboard. If the vibrator gets toggled too often in a very short time, the timer tends to stack up times, causing lag and vibration delays. This flaw can be easily achieved when typing multiple keys at once.
To demonstrate you this event visually I created a small graph.
The red area indicates timer overlap. The overlap between vibration 1 and 2 causes a delay for the second vibration, moving it out of place.
My main idea to prevent this issue is to merge vibrations into one if the previous vibration hasn't finished yet. For instance vibration 2 would simply join vibration 1.
Another way would be to simply use a single vibration for stacked vibrations, for instance, vibration 2 could simply use the last remaining bit of vibration 1. Why would this work? Well because the vibration controller that I've implemented only applies to times under 100ms, meaning vibration time differences would not be noticeable if one was to spam to keystrokes at once, instead both keystrokes should form and share single vibration.
Finally to my question, how could I make a function check itself it it's being called again. Or at least add a time for the function to check if keystrokes are being spammed multiple times in a short period?
int foo ()
{
static foo_counter;
if(foo_counter)
{
// If function has been called again
}
return(0);
foo_counter++;
}

Push a button while reading sensor in Arduino

I've been doing a little thermometer project to learn Arduino and there is an annoying thing that I have no idea how to resolve.
I have two push buttons to set Min and Max temperature and when I push the buttons it's supposed to set the Min and Max temperature on display.
The problem is that sometimes (50% of times) when I push the buttons during the reading of the temperature sensor, the buttons don't work. I press it but the Min/Max temperature are not set because Arduino is stuck in reading the temperature sensor.
Is there any trick to solve this kind of problem? If I had a keyboard for typing some number for example I imagine I would have the same problem and It's not "user-friendly".
Here is an example of part of the code I'm using:
#include <OneWire.h>
#include <DallasTemperature.h>
#include <LiquidCrystal.h>
//variables declaration...
void setup() {
sensors.begin();
sensors.getAddress(sensor1, 0);
pinMode(buzzer, OUTPUT);
pinMode(btBuzzer, INPUT);
pinMode(btMin, INPUT);
pinMode(btMax, INPUT);
}
void loop() {
readButtons();
playBuzzer();
readTemperature();
printDisplay();
delay(150);
}
void readButtons(){
if(digitalRead(btBuzzer)){
buzzerOn = !buzzerOn;
}
if(digitalRead(btMin)){
if(tempMin == 69)
tempMin = 59;
else
tempMin++;
}
if(digitalRead(btMax)){
if(tempMax == 75)
tempMax = 63;
else
tempMax++;
}
}
void readTemperature(){
sensors.requestTemperatures();
temperature = sensors.getTempC(sensor1);
}
//lots of other methods
As others have pointed out here, the button press may not happen at the same time as you query the pin with digitalRead(btBuzzer). This type of problem is what so called "interrupts" were invented for, which allow you to respond to events that may occur while you are not monitoring the pin of interest.
For example, the Arduino UNO R3 allow for interrupts on pin 2 and 3. You should look up the reference for attachInterrupt(). The processor will execute a callback function in the event (the "interrupt") that you register for (e.g. the voltage on pin 2 changing from low to high). This means that you will no longer have to call a readButtons() function from your main loop.
Some of the best ways to learn coding exist in how to answer this question.
What I'd like to suggest doing is to try timing your code. Remember that loop() is creating a repeating structure. So we can say things like how long does the computer take to run each loop. When we have an interrupt like a button press how does that effect the iteration through the loop and is it conditional about how to rest the processor (the delay).
The delay is required so as to not do what's called "spin" the processor (have the processor as quickly as it can do a lot of work to accomplish absolutely nothing). However, notice how the code doesn't account for work done changing how long we delay?
Now let's imagine the processor actually can go through that loop more than one time very quickly. Remember delay of only 150 milliseconds isn't a lot of time. So maybe one button press will be enough to set tempMin from 59 to 69 in rapid succession and loop several times over rather than just increasing one number at a time.
What you have here is a chance to learn debugging. First trick is to determine is the loop running too fast or too slow; are you getting desired functionality or not and finally if you can reask the question after you know if it's happening too fast or slow.
For now, I'd recommend taking a look at global variables and finite state machines (i.e. if you're in a state of button press, don't accept any further button presses until you're done with your state and only transition in known ways).

Produce tones at certain time-interval using C programming

Im using C language for a PIC18F to produce tones such that each of them plays at certain time-interval. I used PWM to produce a tone. But I don't know how to create the intervals. Here is my attempt.
#pragma code //
void main (void)
{
int i=0;
// set internal oscillator to 1MHz
//OSCCON = 0b10110110; // IRCFx = 101
//OSCTUNEbits.PLLEN = 0; //PLL disabled
TRISDbits.TRISD7 = 0;
T2CON = 0b00000101; //timer2 on
PR2 = 240;
CCPR1L = 0x78;
CCP1CON= 0b01001100;
LATDbits.LATD7=0;
Delay1KTCYx(1000);
while(1);
}
When I'm doing embedded programming, I find it extremely useful to add comments explaining exactly what I'm intending when I'm set configuration registers. That way I don't have to go back to the data sheets to figure out what 0x01001010 does when I'm trying to grok the code the next time I have to change it. (Just be sure to keep the comments in sync with the changes).
From what I can decode, it looks like you've got the PWM registers set up, but no way to change the frequency at your desired intervals. There are a few ways to do it, here are 2 ideas:
You could read a timer on startup, add the desired interval to get a target time, and poll the timer in the while loop. When the timer hits the target, set a new PWM duty cycle, and add the next interval to your target time. This will work fine, until you need to start doing other things in the background loop.
You could set timer0's count to 0xFFFF-interval, and set it to interrupt on rollover. In the ISR, set the new PWM duty cycle, and reset timer0 count to the next interval.
One common way of controlling timing in embedded processes looks like this:
int flag=0;
void main()
{
setup_interrupt(); //schedule interrupt for desired time.
while (1)
{
if (flag)
{
update_something();
flag = 0;
}
}
Where does flag get set? In the interrupt handler:
void InterruptHandler()
{
flag = 1;
acknowledge_interupt_reg = 0;
}
You've got all the pieces in your example, you just need to put them together in the right places. In your case, update_something() would update the PWM. The logic would look like: "If it's on, turn it off; else turn it on. Update the tone (duty cycle) if desired"
There should be no need for additional delays or pauses in the main while loop. The goal is that it just runs over and over again, waiting for something to do. If the program needs to do something else at a different rate, you can add another flag, which is triggered completely independently, and the timing of the two tasks won't interfere with each other.
EDIT:
I'm now confused about what you are trying to accomplish. Do you want a series of pulses of the same tone (on-off-on-off)? Or do you want a series of different notes without pauses (do-re-me-fa-...)? I had been assuming the latter, but now I'm not sure.
After seeing your updated code, I'm not sure exactly how your system is configured, so I'm just going to ask some questions I hope are helpful.
Is the PWM part working? Do you get the initial tone? I'm assuming yes.
Does your hardware have some sort of clock pulse hooked up to the RA4/T0CKI pin? If not, you need T0 to be clock mode, not counter mode.
Is the interrupt being called? You are setting INT0IE, which enables the external interrupt, not the timer interrupt
What interval do you want between tone updates? Right now, you are getting 0xFFFF / (clock_freq/8) You need to set the TMR0H/L registers if you want something different.
What's on LATD7? and why are you clearing it? Are you saying it enables PWM output?
Why the call to Delay()? The timer itself should be providing the needed delay. There seems to be a disconnect about how to do timing. I'll expand my other answer
Where are you trying to change the PWM frequency? Don't you need to write to PR2? You will need to give it a different value for every different tone.
"Halting build on first failure as requested."
This just says you have some syntax error, without showing us the error report, we can't really help.
In Windows you can use the Beep function in kernel32:
[DllImport("kernel32.dll")]
private static extern bool Beep(int frequency, int duration);

Given an audio stream, find when a door slams (sound pressure level calculation?)

Not unlike a clap detector ("Clap on! clap clap Clap off! clap clap Clap on, clap off, the Clapper! clap clap ") I need to detect when a door closes. This is in a vehicle, which is easier than a room or household door:
Listen: http://ubasics.com/so/van_driver_door_closing.wav
Look:
It's sampling at 16bits 4khz, and I'd like to avoid lots of processing or storage of samples.
When you look at it in audacity or another waveform tool it's quite distinctive, and almost always clips due to the increase in sound pressure in the vehicle - even when the windows and other doors are open:
Listen: http://ubasics.com/so/van_driverdoorclosing_slidingdoorsopen_windowsopen_engineon.wav
Look:
I expect there's a relatively simple algorithm that would take readings at 4kHz, 8 bits, and keep track of the 'steady state'. When the algorithm detects a significant increase in the sound level it would mark the spot.
What are your thoughts?
How would you detect this event?
Are there code examples of sound pressure level calculations that might help?
Can I get away with less frequent sampling (1kHz or even slower?)
Update: Playing with Octave (open source numerical analysis - similar to Matlab) and seeing if the root mean square will give me what I need (which results in something very similar to the SPL)
Update2: Computing the RMS finds the door close easily in the simple case:
Now I just need to look at the difficult cases (radio on, heat/air on high, etc). The CFAR looks really interesting - I know I'm going to have to use an adaptive algorithm, and CFAR certainly fits the bill.
-Adam
Looking at the screenshots of the source audio files, one simple way to detect a change in sound level would be to do a numerical integration of the samples to find out the "energy" of the wave at a specific time.
A rough algorithm would be:
Divide the samples up into sections
Calculate the energy of each section
Take the ratio of the energies between the previous window and the current window
If the ratio exceeds some threshold, determine that there was a sudden loud noise.
Pseudocode
samples = load_audio_samples() // Array containing audio samples
WINDOW_SIZE = 1000 // Sample window of 1000 samples (example)
for (i = 0; i < samples.length; i += WINDOW_SIZE):
// Perform a numerical integration of the current window using simple
// addition of current sample to a sum.
for (j = 0; j < WINDOW_SIZE; j++):
energy += samples[i+j]
// Take ratio of energies of last window and current window, and see
// if there is a big difference in the energies. If so, there is a
// sudden loud noise.
if (energy / last_energy > THRESHOLD):
sudden_sound_detected()
last_energy = energy
energy = 0;
I should add a disclaimer that I haven't tried this.
This way should be possible to be performed without having the samples all recorded first. As long as there is buffer of some length (WINDOW_SIZE in the example), a numerical integration can be performed to calculate the energy of the section of sound. This does mean however, that there will be a delay in the processing, dependent on the length of the WINDOW_SIZE. Determining a good length for a section of sound is another concern.
How to Split into Sections
In the first audio file, it appears that the duration of the sound of the door closing is 0.25 seconds, so the window used for numerical integration should probably be at most half of that, or even more like a tenth, so the difference between the silence and sudden sound can be noticed, even if the window is overlapping between the silent section and the noise section.
For example, if the integration window was 0.5 seconds, and the first window was covering the 0.25 seconds of silence and 0.25 seconds of door closing, and the second window was covering 0.25 seconds of door closing and 0.25 seconds of silence, it may appear that the two sections of sound has the same level of noise, therefore, not triggering the sound detection. I imagine having a short window would alleviate this problem somewhat.
However, having a window that is too short will mean that the rise in the sound may not fully fit into one window, and it may apppear that there is little difference in energy between the adjacent sections, which can cause the sound to be missed.
I believe the WINDOW_SIZE and THRESHOLD are both going to have to be determined empirically for the sound which is going to be detected.
For the sake of determining how many samples that this algorithm will need to keep in memory, let's say, the WINDOW_SIZE is 1/10 of the sound of the door closing, which is about 0.025 second. At a sampling rate of 4 kHz, that is 100 samples. That seems to be not too much of a memory requirement. Using 16-bit samples that's 200 bytes.
Advantages / Disadvantages
The advantage of this method is that processing can be performed with simple integer arithmetic if the source audio is fed in as integers. The catch is, as mentioned already, that real-time processing will have a delay, depending on the size of the section that is integrated.
There are a couple of problems that I can think of to this approach:
If the background noise is too loud, the difference in energy between the background noise and the door closing will not be easily distinguished, and it may not be able to detect the door closing.
Any abrupt noise, such as a clap, could be regarded as the door is closing.
Perhaps, combining the suggestions in the other answers, such as trying to analyze the frequency signature of the door closing using Fourier analysis, which would require more processing but would make it less prone to error.
It's probably going to take some experimentation before finding a way to solve this problem.
You should tap in to the door close switches in the car.
Trying to do this with sound analysis is overengineering.
There are a lot of suggestions about different signal processing
approaches to take, but really, by the time you learn about detection
theory, build an embedded signal processing board, learn the processing
architecture for the chip you chose, attempt an algorithm, debug it, and then
tune it for the car you want to use it on (and then re-tune and re-debug
it for every other car), you will be wishing you just stickey taped a reed
switch inside the car and hotglued a magnet to the door.
Not that it's not an interesting problem to solve for the dsp experts,
but from the way you're asking this question, it's clear that sound
processing isn't the route you want to take. It will just be such a nightmare
to make it work right.
Also, the clapper is just an high pass filter fed into a threshold detector. (plus a timer to make sure 2 claps quickly enough together)
There is a lot of relevant literature on this problem in the radar world (it's called detection theory).
You might have a look at "cell averaging CFAR" (constant false alarm rate) detection. Wikipedia has a little bit here. Your idea is very similar to this, and it should work! :)
Good luck!
I would start by looking at the spectral. I did this on the two audio files you gave, and there does seem to be some similarity you could use. For example the main difference between the two seems to be around 40-50Hz. My .02.
UPDATE
I had another idea after posting this. If you can, add an accelerometer onto the device. Then correlate the vibrational and acoustic signals. This should help with cross vehicle door detection. I'm thinking it should be well correlated since the sound is vibrationally driven, wheres the stereo for example, is not. I've had a device that was able to detect my engine rpm with a windshield mount (suction cup), so the sensitivity might be there. (I make no promises this works!)
(source: charlesrcook.com)
%% Test Script (Matlab)
clear
hold all %keep plots open
dt=.001
%% Van driver door
data = wavread('van_driver_door_closing.wav');
%Frequency analysis
NFFT = 2^nextpow2(length(data));
Y = fft(data(:,2), NFFT)/length(data);
freq = (1/dt)/2*linspace(0,1,NFFT/2);
spectral = [freq' 2*abs(Y(1:NFFT/2))];
plot(spectral(:,1),spectral(:,2))
%% Repeat for van sliding door
data = wavread('van_driverdoorclosing.wav');
%Frequency analysis
NFFT = 2^nextpow2(length(data));
Y = fft(data(:,2), NFFT)/length(data);
freq = (1/dt)/2*linspace(0,1,NFFT/2);
spectral = [freq' 2*abs(Y(1:NFFT/2))];
plot(spectral(:,1),spectral(:,2))
The process for finding distinct spike in audio signals is called transient detection. Applications like Sony's Acid and Ableton Live use transient detection to find the beats in music for doing beat matching.
The distinct spike you see in the waveform above is called a transient, and there are several good algorithms for detecting it. The paper Transient detection and classification in energy matters describes 3 methods for doing this.
I would imagine that the frequency and amplitude would also vary significantly from vehicle to vehicle. Best way to determine that would be taking a sample in a Civic versus a big SUV. Perhaps you could have the user close the door in a "learning" mode to get the amplitude and frequency signature. Then you could use that to compare when in usage mode.
You could also consider using Fourier analysis to eliminate background noises that aren't associated with the door close.
Maybe you should try to detect significant instant rise in air pressure that should mark a door close. You can pair it with this waveform and sound level analysis and these all might give you a better result.
On the issue of less frequent sampling, the highest sound frequency which can be captured is half of the sampling rate. Thus, if the car door sound was strongest at 1000Hz (for example) then a sampling rate below 2000Hz would lose that sound entirely
A very simple noise gate would probably do just fine in your situation. Simply wait for the first sample whose amplitude is above a specified threshold value (to avoid triggering with background noise). You would only need to get more complicated than this if you need to distinguish between different types of noise (e.g. a door closing versus a hand clap).

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