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Thread: Hotwheels Radar Gun

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    Default Hotwheels Radar Gun

    Not sure if the old posts will be recovered or merged, so we might as well get back too it in any case.

    I heard the these radar guns are being discontinued. I would think they are going to be on the shelves for a while yet, but the big chains say they're not continuing with them.

    I've slowly been working on small modifications to mine and working on modifications for other unrelated radar guns.

    This is some of what I've been doing.



Look Here ->
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    Great to see homebrewing alive and well!

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    If you in Sydney, Homebrew (electronics) club meets regularly.

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    Thanks for the offer, unfortunately I'm in Brisvegas...

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    can anybody guide me about interfacing this Radar gun with PC's parallel port.

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    Depends on how you want to interface it.
    If you just want to transfer the numbers across to the computer, then it might be a bit tricky. The CPU is an AVR, though the code is locked. The circuit isn't really designed to output to anything but the LCD screen.
    So interfacing directly to the LCD lines is one way to get the data out directly via a computer's printer port.

    Is there some specific reason for using the parallel port ?

    If you're really interested in playing with radar modules, you can interface them directly to the microphone on your sound card.

    You can also build a simple amplifier and then use this to interface the module to a single bit on the parrallel port and use your own FFT code to process the data.

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    No there are 2 motors.motor A and motor B.

    Using radar gun we are taking the speed and distance in which the motor A lies.

    Radar gun is actually fitted to Motor B.

    Using data collected from Motor A,if it exceeds a limit we should stop Motor B.

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    No there are 2 motors.motor A and motor B.

    Using radar gun we are taking the speed and distance in which the motor A lies.

    Radar gun is actually fitted to Motor B.

    Using data collected from Motor A,if it exceeds a limit we should stop Motor B.

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    What will the motor be powering ?

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    Use the sound card and a cheap surplus X band dopler module.

    You can elaborate on the overall idea, it may be a simple tachometer will do the job for you.

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    Default speed & distance

    My aim is to take the data such as speed and distance from the radar gun.

    after processing the data in PC , if it exceeds a limit then PC should give signal to stop a motor running.

    There is no specific reason for using parallel port.I thought interfacing in it will be an easier one.

    can anybody give complete details of how to do it.

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    Does anyone know what dielectric resonant oscillator (DRO) they use and where I can get one? Is there info available on how they work?

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    There is plenty of info on DRO's. The "puck" itself is much like a resonant tank circuit in itself. If you want a cheap source of DRO's, shit... they're more common than gunn diodes these days. Find an old satellite LNC and there will be one in the running at 11.3GHz. The newer LNC's the DRO is intergrated onto the main board. But if you have an old single polarity LNC, then they are often mounted on a seperate circuit board with their own cavity and a small solder bridge connecting them to the main board. +5V supply and away you go. If you want to modulate them, then insert a ripple voltage on the supply, though it's often just simpler to mix in a signal rather than direct modulate them.

    If you can't find an old satellite LNC, then try Wyong field day on the 17th of Feb. There will be HEAPS there. If you're in Sydney, I know where you can find a pile of them dirt cheap. How many do you want ?

    Srish ... use the sound card. You can't go wrong, just connect the mixer diode directly to the microphone input and you have a ready made interface for your experiments.
    Try using a spectrograph audio problem, you'll be able to "see" what the radar is doing. If you're good at writing fast code, and are not too bad at Fast Fourier Transforms, then you will be able to manage distance and ranging with nothing more than a simple door module.
    If you're really clever, you'll realise that the microphone is a stereo input and that the right maths can resolve a complex picture of the targets.

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    Default distance measuring with radar gun

    Hi,
    I am thinking in interfacing an electronic circuit with lcd display to the RX and TX to measure distances. Do you think it's possible?
    thanks
    Mahia

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    Measuring distances isn't practicle using dopler modules.
    It can be done if you're up to the challange, but you will need to consider the precission required.

    Lets say you want to measure something about 10 metres.
    1/(3x10^8/10) = 33.3nS return signal is 66.6nS.
    Every nanosecond is about 15cm distance.
    The dopler head can manage this sort of bandwidth, the question is how fast can your pulse detector work ?

    For distances over 1km, it becomes an issue that the module isn't powerful enough.

    What distances do you how to measure ?

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    sorry, I wasn't informed about your reply.
    the distance is between 5 and 10 meters. I have one hot wheels radar gun and trying to find a solution.
    It will be great if any suggestion
    thanks
    Mahia

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    Well, ultrasonic tape measures are the best thing for the job and they work in much the same way.

    The hotwheels gun itself isn't really useful for the task without making some complex modifications.

    Assuming you want to do distance measuring for a school project or something and it has to be radar. Then you are best to get an old "gunn door module". These are the units you see on shopping center automatic doors or old movement alarms.
    They often appear on ebay.
    This is a K-Band version.

    You still need to consider your circuit being able to detect very fast pulses.
    Rather than pulsing the radar, the frequency is changed and the delay in change of frequency corresponds to the distance to the target.

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    I would like to get pc connected to a Hot Wheels radar. That needs modification to firmware. I guess original firmware aren't available, so it has to be made from scratch and serial port support has to be added.

    Has someone maybe done this already?

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    the unit uses an AVR chip. you can erase the firmware and it does have serial programing pads. tyr doing a google search ... there is one guy out there who has information on it.

    I'd rather not erase the firmware, and would prefer to connect the mixer output directly to the microphone input on the sound card.
    Much much more fun.

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    Erasing AVR will destroy measurement algorithm.. so that is not an option. Google just finds lcd control...

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