School Project: Help needed

Catch and train a bat.

Well, besides catching a bat,you could have a look at

Ben

That's a pretty broad subject, and not one that you're going to be able to tackle fully as a class project -- which means that what you're _really_ being asked to do is some little part of it.

First, I'd listen closely to what the prof has to say -- he may be giving you the parameters of the project without being explicit about it (I hate that).

Second, he wants you to do something with SONAR, probably ultrasonic. I'd web search on SONAR, ultrasonic, possibly 'ultrasonic range finding'.

Here is one with complete plans...

Good luck, Luhan

The teacher is interesed, I imagine in organizing the project from begining to end. Which mean that at least a crude apparatus must be built and functional. Believe it or not, he would like the thng to have a speech instead of relying on vibration or intensity of vibration like some commercial unit have.

thanks

I wonder if he's asked any of the intended users what *their* preferences might be. I'd think speech wouldn't be nearly as useful since it's simply so slow in providing feedback, but I wouldn't really know either.

I have been surprised that you see talking RF power & VSWR meters out there, and apparently they sell significant quantities!

Hi Joel, Well, a lot of the stuff for the visually impaired finds its way into the 'normal' population. A few years ago, talking watches and calculators were all the rage, especially for kids! And, if I am tuning an RF stage, it can be right handy to be able to see which slug I'm turning without having to look at the meter... 8-)

Charlie

Speech is insane for a dumb unit. If it could say "there is a door to your left" reliably, then maybe not. But realistically, for a simple unit, all you're going to get is a range to nearest obstruction, and indication of how much nearby reflection there is. Speaking this every second or so is going to be very tiring to listen to. Not to mention less usable than vibration, where you can easily turn your head, and get a scan of the area.

I have a suspicion the "requirement" for speech probably is just the professor's own, uhh... appreciation of speech synthesis or some such.

Many years ago for an opto-electronics lab I built a heartbeat detector based on an IR LED and phototransistor (you put your finger on it) and a bunch of fancy op-amps performing low-noise amplification, filtering and detection; it fed a flashing LED and a beeper every time it detected a beat. I showed it off at the appointed time, and the main feedback I received was, "nice... but shouldn't there be a digital readout of beats per minute!" Arrrrggh!

You should have added a one minute gate and told him it was for the blind to count the beeps so they would know their pulse rate. ;-)

That would be a simple pressure sensor inserted into the anus of the seeing eye dog, then into an embedded PC for translation to human speech.