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Return to BlogConstruction of US2B Radar
Posted Feb 09, 2012 at 11:45 am
Figure 1
The project consists of an old bipolar stepper motor, an ultrasonic range sensor, and a PIC18F4550 microcontroller that will be used to develop the US2B Radar.
During the operation, the ultrasonic range finder is turned by the stepper motor 360 degrees and back which helps the cable prevent being wind up. The distance is measure and the range finder is activated after each step. Using an asynchronous interrupt transfer, the data such as distance and stepper position are sent to the PC by the PIC when two measurements have been made. The motor is maintained not to step too fast due to a timer included within the PIC.
The C# language is used to write the radar screen application while the asynchronous PIC-to-PC USB interrupt transfer is used by the USB communication code for the PIC and applications. The PIC was programmed in a way that the stepper motor only advances if the data has been taken by the PC. This signifies that the start/stop button can be used to start and stop the radar from within the application. The number of steps that radar does should be specified to support different stepper motors.
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2 years ago: Oddly, when you use a "ultrasonic range sensor", that would be a SONAR ("SOund Navigation And Ranging"). RADAR is "RAdio Detection And Ranging". So it's not even CLOSE to a RADAR, it's a SONAR. Still a neat project, but the nomenclature is WRONG.