Poor-man's Radar Gun

By W1nt3rmut3
You know you speed when driving, don't lie. You know you are looking constantly
for that shiny blue and red, ready
to peg ya for doing double. Wouldn't be cool to have a radar gun for your own us
e? Let me explain....
Science:
This is "Poor Man's Radar" because this isn't real radar. It's really ultrasonic
pulses. The good thing is ultrasonic
pulses are easier to understand unlike real radar. To the science.
Speed is the distance traveled over a time period. To find the distance, we need
to find how far our pulse traveled to
object we are pointing at. But we need a one-way measurement, not round trip, so
we divide by 2. Sound travels at 340
meters per second. That's the speed of our pulse as well. So, if the pulse was s
ent out, and "came back" in one second,
the round trip of the pulse is 340 meters. We to know how far the object travele
d, so do this twice, subtract the values,
and find the absolute value of the answer. Why the absolute value? If the object
was going away from us, we would have a
negative answer, so the absolute value would get rid of the negative.
We also need the time. We know the pulse took once second to come back, but we n
eed to divide by 2 since we need only the
one way time. we subtract to measurements, and find the absolute value. Divide t
he distance by the time, and you have the speed.
Parts:
Pringles Can (THIS DOESN'T INVOLVE eight-oh-too-dot-eleven-bee)
BASIC Stamp (www.parallaxinc.com)
Board of Education (www.parallaxinc.com, or any Printed Circuit Board)
Devantech SRF04 UltraSonic Ranger (http://www.robot-electronics.co.uk/shop/Ultra
sonic_Ranger_SRF082001.htm)
Solder, wires, and patience
Assemblage:
The Ranger above will actually give us the distance to the object, so less work
for us, but we still need the time. Easy
enough. By rearranging the equation Speed=Distance/Time, we get Time=Distance/Sp
eed. The distance is the reported distance,
and the speed is the speed of sound.
The Basic Stamp microcontroller is perfect for this, since it is small, and uses
the I2C ( http://www.semiconductors.philips.com/buses/i2c/ )
interface, which the Ranger uses to report the distance. Here's the psedocode fo
r the project, cause giving you the code gives
you no challenge:
Define the varibles:
distance_1
distance_2
time_1
time_2
dist_diff
time_diff
speed
loop:
Get distance, store in distance_1
Get distance, store in distance_2
Subtract distance_1 from distance_2, get absolute value, store in dist_diff
distance_1/340=time_1
distance_2/340=time_2
Subtract time_1 from time_2, get absolute value, store in time_diff
dist_diff/time_diff, store in speed
display speed
goto loop
Of course, your gonna have to convert values along the way, I didn't include tha
t part. And your gonna have to be pointing straight on at the
object, since this isn't real radar, which finds the doppler shift of the pulse.
Go find a science book for more info.But these instructions
should get you on the way to building a Poor Man's Radar Gun!
Shouts: Back of Nuts and Volts for the inspiration.