Ping: PrettyboyTim

[magnatom]

Hi Tim,

I was just wondering if you have had any luck with the ultrasound car distance sensor? I'd love to get a handle on how close the cars are actually coming!

 

[PrettyboyTim]

I haven't doen anything on it for a while now - my Wife set up a jewellery and accessories business earlier this year, and the pre-Christmas period has been pretty hectic. Today is my last day at work this year though, so perhaps I'll get a chance to do something with it over the Christmas period.

The main problem with it I think will be ensuring that nothing shakes loose on the bike. It's put together using a solderless breadboard, so the connections may be liable to shake loose.

 

[magnatom]

I haven't doen anything on it for a while now - my Wife set up a jewellery and accessories business earlier this year, and the pre-Christmas period has been pretty hectic. Today is my last day at work this year though, so perhaps I'll get a chance to do something with it over the Christmas period.

The main problem with it I think will be ensuring that nothing shakes loose on the bike. It's put together using a solderless breadboard, so the connections may be liable to shake loose.

No worries. I had a friend who's girlfriend ran a small jewellery business. She used to make a lot of the stuff that she sold. Very nice stuff to. It was lot of hard work and the workload used to vary from hectic (like at Christmas) to very quiet (like in Feburary!).

Good luck with the business!

I suppose it would need to deal with a fair amount of vibration, how about placing the board in a box with some sort of compatible foam filler surrounding it and damping some of the vibration. Of course this is probably just me talking through a hole in my ar&^

 

[PrettyboyTim]

I suppose it would need to deal with a fair amount of vibration, how about placing the board in a box with some sort of compatible foam filler surrounding it and damping some of the vibration. Of course this is probably just me talking through a hole in my ar&^

Well, I hope not because that's pretty much my plan!

 

[magnatom]

Well, I hope not because that's pretty much my plan!

Great minds and all that......

 

[col]

I like the sound of this,excuse if im getting the wrong idea,but could this be an early warning of approaching cars from behind too?

 

[domtyler]

I preferred the original plan of shining a laser beam directly into the drivers eyes if they got too close.

 

[magnatom]

I preferred the original plan of shining a laser beam directly into the drivers eyes if they got too close.

Ah but you need an official way of determining that they are too close. Anyway this way it could be automatic

 

[magnatom]

I like the sound of this,excuse if im getting the wrong idea,but could this be an early warning of approaching cars from behind too?

You could use it this way but I'd want to us the device to measure how close cars are when they pass by my. For example, are they giving me my 3 feet?

 

[col]

You know those stick out reflectors,the ones that fold out from the bike,how about making a three foot one?might be effective in making vehicles avoid touching it?

 

[domtyler]

You know those stick out reflectors,the ones that fold out from the bike,how about making a three foot one?might be effective in making vehicles avoid touching it?

Especially if you stuck a couple of rusty nails in the end of it!

 

[col]

Especially if you stuck a couple of rusty nails in the end of it!

I was just thinking something similar too,but i was thinking of a drill bit

 

[Amanda P]

A giant comedy cartoon can opener.

 

[Arch]

Especially if you stuck a couple of rusty nails in the end of it!

I believe a garden rake carried athwartships works very well.

I've seen those laser tape measure things in shops - meant for measuring rooms and so on. I assume there's a reason it wouldn't work to just mount one of them on your bike (aside from the potential blinding aspect...)

 

[PrettyboyTim]

Okay, so inspired by Iceniner's example and the fact that my Mum bought me a lovely adjustable soldering iron for Chirstmas that I still hadn't tried out, I decided to finall get around to moving on a bit further with my rangefinding device.

Well, I've managed to just about build my very first circuitboard, so I'm quite pleased with myself, despite the fact I almost completely screwed it up several times. It's wired exactly the same as my previous prototype, except that everything is now soldered on to some stripboard rather than just plugged in to some breadboard, so it shouldn't just fall apart when I attach it to the bike. It all plugs in to my Arduino prototyping board, and it all works as before.

All I need to do now is a little more work on the software, as it currently just gives you a running readout of how far away things are, whereas ideally I'd like it to tell you what the closest thing was within the last five seconds, or something like that. I also need to work out how to fix it to the bike, which might be a pain as the board is slightly too big to fit into any of my current project boxes.

Anyway, once that's done all I need a dry day to try it on as the ultrasonic unit isn't water resistant.