Friday, November 18, 2016

PO meeting

Purpose of the product

Develop their current product. The problem is that their product is only for large trash cans and cannot measure small cans effectively.
Resources. Enovo Oy provides us all materials that school doesn’t. They will send us sensors and STM32L board. School has basic electric components that we can use.
Meetings will be arranged approximate every second week online or they will come here.

HW
Frequency will be 200 kHz and microcontroller will be used as well as possible. They will send different transducers with different resonant frequencies.
Battery operated.
Total tolerance in distance measurement will be 2-10 cm.
Device should be triggered automatically by time algorithm.

SW
Style guide will be sent.
Language c
STM32L microcontroller
debugger GCC, ST-Link or something else
wirelessness if we have time



Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Sonar



1 Sonar

Sonar (Sound Navigation and Ranging) is used in boats and ships to measure distance between the boat and the seafloor or another object. Sonar device transmits and receives sound waves. When the sound velocity in a substance is known, the distance between measurable object and test device can be calculated. Speed of sound multiplied by time delay between transmitted and received sound waves gives distance. With multiple sonar sensors object location can be calculated.




Image 1.1 Basic functionality Sonar system


Image 1.2 Acoustic torpedo

2. Ultrasound measurement device

Ultrasound or ultrasonic is sound waves frequencies higher than upper limit human hearing range. Ultrasound measurement device includes transmitter and receiver. These two components are often combined into one block called transducer. Transducer is used for electric signal and ultrasound conversions.  Analog circuits are used for signal processing, transmitters power amplifier, receivers comparator and possible oscillators and filters. Control, counter and data handling circuits are most likely logical digital circuits. Microcontroller is used for data analysis and calculations.





Image 2.1  block diagram example


3. Applications

Most commonly ultrasonic technology is used in underwater applications. This technology is often used in the military applications eg. underwater communications, submarine navigation and mine countermeasures. In civilian purposes sonar is mostly used for location applications, echo sounding and fisheries. Sonar is also used in multiple scientific applications. Also nowadays, with the development of wireless technology, ultrasonic distance measurement can be used in small wireless devices to transmit all kinds of data.

Image 3.1 Sonar image of a shipwreckage

Sources:
http://www.ti.com/lit/an/slaa136a/slaa136a.pdf
http://www.analog.com/media/en/reference-design-documentation/reference-designs/CN0343.pdf
Images:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/07/Sonar_Principle_EN.svg/800px-Sonar_Principle_EN.svg.png
 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1e/AcousticHomingDiagram.svg/300px-AcousticHomingDiagram.svg.png
http://image.slidesharecdn.com/ultrasonictransducer-120914042111-phpapp01/95/ultrasonic-transducer-6-728.jpg?cb=1347596512