[sdiy] proximity detectors anyone ?

[Eric Wood]

The Sharp proximity detectors work very well. They will see a clear plastic 
bag, for example. I used one of the Sharp chips in a design I did for school 
and it worked great ( sort of a theremin type controller for modular 
synths). If I remember correctly you can adjust the range and wether you 
want analog or digital output.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Scott K Warren" <scott at rosetta.com>
To: "synth diy" <synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl>
Sent: Saturday, May 20, 2006 7:05 PM
Subject: Re: [sdiy] proximity detectors anyone ?


> Sharp makes a line of little IR rangers that are small, cheap, easy to 
> use, and in my experience robust & reliable. They are entirely 
> self-contained, needing only +5V and ground as inputs and providing a 
> single analog or digital output line indicating sensed range to an object 
> in front of them. They take distance measurements about every 30 ms, 
> automatically. Depending on the model they can measure distances from 
> about an inch up to six feet. The modulation makes them robust against 
> ambient light, and the detection scheme makes them work with most any 
> opaque object regardless of color or surface characteristics. Fingers and 
> hands should work fine. I have put a number of them into homebrew mobile 
> robots with great success.
>
> You can get them a lot of places but Acroname Robotics has a nice web page 
> explaining them:
>
> http://www.acroname.com/robotics/info/articles/sharp/sharp.html
>
> Hope this helps,
>
> skw
>
>
> On May 20, 2006, at 1:44 PM, jbv wrote:
>
>> Hi list,
>>
>> today an idea arose during a conversation with friends...
>> It began with proximity detectors used in robotics, and
>> especially the fact that those sensors are used on a moving
>> device to detect non-moving objects of the environment in
>> order to avoid them...
>> but what if the idea was reversed : fixed detectors to detect
>> distance of moving objects ? for instance 6 detectors, each
>> one on 1 side of a cube, and moving objects in between
>> (a moving hand, balloons, bubbles, a butterfly, flies,
>> smoke, whatever). Signals sent by detectors would be
>> hooked to a uC to compute in realtime the xyz position of
>> the moving hand, and these parameters would be used as
>> VC signals for synths...
>> in the case of a hand, I guess a joystick or a dataglove could
>> also be used to determine xyz position in space, but I'm sure
>> there are many other funny applications...
>>
>> so here's my question : does anyone have any experience with
>> proximity detectors, and what would be the best choice : IR,
>> ultrasonic...
>> I've already found several papers on the subject via google, but
>> I'd like to have the opnion of this list as well...
>>
>> Best,
>> JB
>>
>>
>
>