Yesterday we profiled Ella’s use of the PCB ruler to make a level measuring tool.
Today we will check out her extension- a sonar reader using sonar technology and RGB LEDS. She used the following materials for her project:
Hardware:
- PCB Ruler
- BeagleBone Black
- PmodMAXSONAR
- RGB LED (4)
- Soldering Iron
- Wire
Software:
Her inspiration for the project came from trying to circumvent the limits of the ruler itself, and measure things longer than the ruler’s physical 6 inches. She chose to use the PmodMAXSONAR to accomplish this goal.
“The PmodMAXSONAR is a ultrasonic range finder with effective detection range of ~6 in – 255 in. It’s capable of reading measurements three ways at once – through UART, analog and PWM. In this project I use only the analog feature to record distance measurements.”
After designing the system and goals of the project, she set up the circuit:
Finally she set up the software so that for every inch the MAXSONAR sees past 6, it will light up the first diode in the first LED (red), then the second diode in the first LED (green) for the next inch, etc.
This cycle is set to continue for however far away the object is you’re trying to measure is.
Her finished product was a pretty awesome measuring tool, with a lot of applications both in and out of the electronics workshop!
