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Ultrasonic range finder

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epilot

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Hi again,

What is the most powerful range finder circuit you have seen ever?!
What about its ranging?

Just an idea:
Using a lot of ultrasonic side by side "T" type sensors and amplifying them, then use a R type sensor, won't you think it can finds the ranges of hundreds meters or more ;)?!
 
Power decreases exponentially so you would need serious amounts of power to sense hundreds of meters in air. Frequency also affects it a lot so for longer range you would need to use a very VERY VERY VERY low frequency.

What I imagine would happen is that it'd be like a massive hurricane gust that blows down houses and trees and sends cars flying...not much use if you want to find the range of the car you are sending flying lol.

With an array, what would happen is that the sensors are too far apart and their energy would dissipate too quickly compared to the distances they are at when sitting beside each other. It wouldn't accumulate.

There was that low frequency sonar the military tested and it killed 50 whales. I'd guess that's the most powerful one I've heard of.
 
dknguyen said:
Power decreases exponentially so you would need serious amounts of power to sense hundreds of meters in air. Frequency also affects it a lot so for longer range you would need to use a very VERY VERY VERY low frequency.

What I imagine would happen is that it'd be like a massive hurricane gust that blows down houses and trees and sends cars flying...not much use if you want to find the range of the car you are sending flying lol.

With an array, what would happen is that the sensors are too far apart and their energy would dissipate too quickly compared to the distances they are at when sitting beside each other. It wouldn't accumulate.

There was that low frequency sonar the military tested and it killed 50 whales. I'd guess that's the most powerful one I've heard of.

why overstate!;)

I want to make one to see the distance with a seven segment, it is not for a car.

A phase delay is agood choice to focal the array

As you know the ultrasonic is directional.
why you are you saying: "Frequency also affects it a lot so for longer range you would need to use a very VERY VERY VERY low frequency."

What the story of killed whales is really?
 
The sonar was too low frequency and too powerful and I guess it messed with the whale's echolocation (like blowing their eardrums and maybe causing brain damage or other problems) which caused all the whales to get beached and die. It could have also caused compression/decompression sickness or effects on the whales. Any of these could cause them to die.

Almost like someone pounding on your chest with a really powerful wind- except sound travels better through water, and water is much heavier.

You can probably imagine whatever it did to the whales, it couldn't have been good.

Beamforming only affect beams they overlap with. The sensors left and right get farther away from the center and their power dissipates too quickly over the distances it takes for their beams effectively to overlap with the wave from the center transmitter. It's not like a magnifying glass where you focusall the light rays to a single spot. The energy in the parts of the wave that do not overlap with the center wave is lost. Even where the wave does overlap, a lot of energy is already lost from dissipation through the water.

Frequency also affects it a lot so for longer range you would need to use a very VERY VERY VERY low frequency."

Pressure waves (like sound waves in water or air) dissipate energy much more quickly with distance if they are a higher frequency. As an example, for a two sounds waves of the same power:

120kHz- travels ~1.5m, beamwidth is 15 degrees
40kHz- travels ~6m, beamwidth is 30 degrees

A high frequency wave loses energy much faster, but is much narrower. A low frequency wave travels much farther, but is much wider. So you use a low frequency sonar to see far away at a wide area, with low resolution or you use a high frequency to see very close to you with lots of resolution. It's like if you use your eyes to look far away you can see a very wide area with little detail and if you look at something in your hand, you see a very small area but lots of detail.

Think about this: When some jerk is driving down the street with his speakers turned up really loud, can you hear the words of the song (high frequencies) or can you only hear the thumping bass from the subwoofer (low frequencies)?
 
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I think the whales have more to fear from hungry Japanese than from a lost submarine :)
 
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I dunno...what are you more afraid of? THe evil canibalistic assassin hunting you down? Or the deadly deadly radiation from the mad scientist next door?
 
Going further down the spectrum infrasound can be detected after traveling round the world.
 
Lasers. Not exactly sure how they work but have line of sight measurement.
They have used them waaaaay back since the Apollo missions. A reflector target was left on the moon and is used to measure the distance of the moon earth system. I've forgotten the accuracy but it was pretty small. This should be fairly easy to find on the web.

You can buy these as tapeless measuring tapes too. The price has dropped considerably.
This technology is used to great degree in extreme accuracy in engineering.
 
Techno said:
Lasers. Not exactly sure how they work but have line of sight measurement.
They have used them waaaaay back since the Apollo missions. A reflector target was left on the moon and is used to measure the distance of the moon earth system. I've forgotten the accuracy but it was pretty small. This should be fairly easy to find on the web.

You can buy these as tapeless measuring tapes too. The price has dropped considerably.
This technology is used to great degree in extreme accuracy in engineering.

I think the poster was only referring to ultrasonic circuits, although with somewhat scattered wording.
 
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