DIY Ultrasonic Range Finder For $5

January 24, 2011 by Chris Nelson 25 Comments

After finding some ultrasonic transducers online for a dollar each [Kerry Wong] decided to create an ultrasonic range finder. The result is much like parallax’s PING))) sensor but much cheaper. His post is not only a good way to save some money, but also does a good job of explaining how ultrasonic sensors work. The transmit circuit is essentially an H-bridge, much like what you would use to control a motor. To listen to the returning echo he uses a pair of high gain/low noise op-amps to filter and amplify the signal. The board he uses to test the range finder (not included in the cost) is an ATMega328 running the Arduino boot loader. He also provides lots of example code to boot.

Touch Screen Using Range Sensors

July 7, 2010 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

This touch screen relies on measurements from two range finders to track your finger as you press buttons. [James Alliban] put this together as his first Arduino project. We’re familiar with [James’] background because of his informative augmented reality business card. As the Arduino picks up data from the range finder it sends it to a Flash script that is running on the PC.

As we watched the video after the break a lot of questions came to mind. What kind of angle do these Ping sensors have? Will there be interference problems if they were placed perpendicular with each other? Would you get more accurate data if they were not both on the top of the screen? For now this is just a preliminary experiment, but we like the concept and may give it a try ourselves.

Continue reading “Touch Screen Using Range Sensors” →

All Terrain Roomba

March 23, 2010 by Mike Szczys 16 Comments

This little rover gets around on rough terrain pretty well. [Dean Segovis] built it using parts from a Roomba. The Roomba uses wheels in conjunction with gearboxes that handle a lot of the dirty work in getting this prototype going. [Dean] grabbed four of them, as well as the motor controller board and batter, and installed them on this Rocker-bogie suspension. In the video after the break he mentions that this would be quite a good climber if the batter were relocated to the center of the body. An ultrasonic sensor adds obstacle avoidance with and Arduino taking care of the processing. We can’t wait to see future versions of the Roomba’s rough-and-tumble outdoor cousin.

Continue reading “All Terrain Roomba” →

Ultrasonically Controlled Instrument

December 26, 2009 by Mike Szczys 2 Comments

[vimeo=http://www.vimeo.com/8228439]

[Rui] is working on a sequencer to control his robotic gamelan. The software maps out the controllers that operate the musical robot, which play the traditional Indonesian instruments.

The controls use ultrasonic distance sensors that detect the proximity of the musician’s hands. This data is collected by an Arduino and sent to a computer for use with the sequencer. The controller body is an upside down salad bowl from Ikea; cheap, available, and creative!

[via @littlebirdceo]

Sunday Software Sound Hacks

December 6, 2009 by Jakob Griffith 17 Comments

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/7348848%5D

[Ico Doornekamp] sent us his ultrasonic-entirely code based-thermin project in response to yesterdays Virtual theremin. By using the programming environment Pure Data, he is able to transform his laptop into a dual input device (while only using a single microphone) without modification. By being so open-ended theoretically anyone can have a theremin within a few moments of downloading, but he does mention it might not work on all hardware.

Also in relation to yesterday’s use of a Wii remote [blobKat] let us know about his thesis project, performance based music making. After studying the connection between musicians and their use of laptops decided that they would want more interaction and movement in their music creation. He combined gesture recognition and synth based movement with Wii remotes to achieve his ends. The video above is an explanation and example of his efforts.

Rotating Radar Visualization

November 16, 2009 by Jakob Griffith 32 Comments

[flickr video=http://www.flickr.com/photos/peplop/4106571163/]

We ask, who wouldn’t want a rotating motion and distance tracking radar? Sure in today’s day and age anyone could purchase a wide-angle sonar or IR solution that achieves the same goal, but [LuckyLarry] took it old school and made his own rotating radar. He used an Arduino, servo, and ultrasonic sensor as a base to gather data, and the open source programming language Processing to draw the data on the screen. He says it’s a little inaccurate currently, but will try out some other sensors in the future.

Modifying A Sonic Cleaner For The Lab

April 7, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 12 Comments

sonic

[Sean] wrote in to tell us about this hack he did to modify a consumer sonicator for lab use. Sonication is often used in labs to aid in mixing in difficult containers or to add energy for certain events. He’s a chemist on a budget, so he couldn’t necessarily afford a nice industrial one. Instead, he found a sonic jewelry cleaner. The main shortcoming of the consumer level one is the fact that it can only go for 3 minute intervals. He needed up to an hour at a time. His solution was fairly simple, he closed the circuit to force it to be continually in the on position, then added a timer in the power line. He notes, that the consumer model wasn’t made to be run this long and could possibly produce enough heat to damage itself. It should not be turned on, then left alone.