Personal (IR) Radar

posted Feb 8th 2008 11:45pm by Will O'Brien
filed under: misc hacks

[chris] sent in this inexpensive personal radar project. It uses a servo mounted IR range finder to locate and display the distance to an object. (Lake a parked car as shown in the demo video) The project is destined for some robotics projects – and who doesn’t love LED display proximity sensors. It makes me think of the direction finders in every other 80′s action movie. It’s gotten some attention on Digg, but I like it for the inexpensive build and the excellent use of a PIC 18F452.

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Comments [12]

12 Responses to Personal (IR) Radar

Lambda_drive says:

February 9, 2008 at 3:07 am

Since it doesn’t use radio waves you can’t really classify it as “radar”.

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Skyler Orlando says:

February 9, 2008 at 8:13 am

“Lidar” then. I think that’s the term for it. But it looks really cool.

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Emilio Ficara says:

February 9, 2008 at 10:04 am

Hello. I have done exactly the same, about one year ago and altough the name LIDAR (light detecting and ranging) was the same !!! It was based upon Pic16F628 but using a stepper motor, not a RC servo. I suggest to mount the sensor in the vertical way, because is much more accurate if you span horizontal way (see the sensor PDF). If you want take a look to the picture of my lidar version, this is the address: http://www.robotop.biz/images/lidar.jpg

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forrest voight says:

February 9, 2008 at 10:07 am

It’s really not lidar either :) Instead of timing the light’s reflection, it uses an infrared led and a long ir sensor behind a plastic aperture to measure the distance as a triangle.

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Chupa says:

February 9, 2008 at 12:40 pm

Anyone recommend a place to purchase these IR modules? I dont think Digikey or mouser has them :-(

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Chupa says:

February 9, 2008 at 12:46 pm

nm, digikey has a whole bunch of them.

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BigD145 says:

February 9, 2008 at 2:30 pm

That was a horrible demo in the vehicle.

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Ben says:

February 9, 2008 at 5:11 pm

“Lake a parked” rather “Like a parked”

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Earl Jr. says:

February 9, 2008 at 5:58 pm

In the second part of the video, I thought it was going to be a zombie attack!

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Bruno says:

February 10, 2008 at 5:21 pm

Yeah, lake a parked car, that kind of sounds fun.

This project is EXACTLY what I was planning on doing with my fadora and a heads up display. Thank you [chris]

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CyanFlux says:

February 12, 2008 at 12:28 pm

would be cool to have it send data to a computer remotely

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somedude says:

February 13, 2008 at 4:11 pm

“Lake a Parked Car”. Essentially this involves becoming God, picking up a lake, and then dropping it over some poor guys (put in favorite supercar).
I like this kind of crazy project.

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