I will see if I can get around to posting a video of the display I end up using for this, because I think that was the hardest area for me. I intend to use this i r display stationary, so in processing I have a map of what doesn’t move and measure the distance kind of like what you have with the exception of some walls and doors in the way.

Shoot me an email if your interested in the brackets (or machinable wax)…krimsonhawk@aol.com

Even the dim red from IR keeps them away.
I just posted another video on youtube.
It came out pretty good.

I’m into electronics and working mechanical stuff, I’m just barely getting into programming the arduino, and I’ve made alot of headway.
The problem with the camera trip, is that I don’t have a camera that has a remote trigger.
And this really really bugs me bad. Because I would have already had photo’s of these guys at my vehicle 3 years ago.
It’s hard to believe, but it’s all real and true.
If you want, I’ll even direct you to the only thermal photo’s of one of these creatures.
It’s on the net, but I don’t have copyright to them, the rightful owner does. But I was there when he got the thermals.
If you inspect the thermals, you’ll discover that there are others in the photo’s. Problem with thermal imagers is that these animals have long hair, about 2 to 3 inches in length. The ends of the hair become the ambient temperatures, thus hiding from the thermal. And the small 240 displays really don’t give any clarity or definition at the time of the viewing.

LOL. I can go on and on.
But that’s what I really need.
I have an Archos 404 portable media player that died on me.
The display has to still be good.
But I’m not sure how you connect the ribbon contacts, or whatever they’re called.

I can see why you want the sonar detection instead

So you can wire up multiple sensors and write their distance to an LCD screen, just building a simple notification screen, 8 of them would be ideal and they should be able to form an 11 foot perimeter and each direction is covered. Even a seriees of rings of LED’s to notify you is pretty simple to do.

You can then also use these sensors to remote trigger your cameras quite easily depending upon the range. You could also try building a trip wire system to set the cameras off – i’ve seen some nice potos done this way, so camera pointing towards the tripwire to get a photo/ film of whatever it is (keeping the camera out of smashing range!)

If there’s a noticeable/ repeating trail then you could set these trip wires around there which may get you some decent results.

I’ve definitey go to try this out thanks for the inspiration.

I’m out in the wilderness inside of my blazer zr2. Its night time, its so dark outside, you can’t see your hand in front of your face. There is a tree canopy.
In this position, alls that I have been able to record thus far are footsteps, snapping twigs, low frequency thudding, grunting and some unknown language.
And yes, I do have this digitally recorded.

It’s hard to get position, of what is outside of my Blazer.
So, sonar is my best ticket.
IR has been known to keep these “creatures” away.
I have several IR cameras posted on top of my Blazer.

So I thought of sonar ping when I seen your youtube radar/sonar video.
At the least, I would like to have a cheap nokia screen on an arduino mega, letting me know of distances within 11 feet around my truck.
Let’s say, when something comes into that 11 foot range, I get the sensor reporting that something is in my immediate parimeter, and which sensor is reading it.
I don’t need to know the distance, but it would be nice, if possible.
At the least, I would have 2 ping sensors, one in front, 1 to the rear.

This info would tell me in what direction to point my IR camera so I can turn it on and start recording. Actually, 2 cameras, one infrared, the other gen 2 NV on an HD Canon videocam.

Because if I was looking around using the vehicle mounted cams, the movement would keep the away.

And it wouldn’t have to be a nokia display, but it would be somewhere near that price range.
I already have about 3k into cameras and NV. LOL

So, a little notification monitor would be priceless.

And yes, they are real.
100% guaranteed!

The ping sensor should be fine on digital and works much the same way as the SRF-05 I would assume. Basically you have a trigger and an echo pin, in my sensor they’re separate but in others they can be combined to use just one pin. I’ll have a look at the Parallax Ping sensor to see if I can help you out.

To track an item, remember that you need to know its position and how its moving and how fast you want to track. For any decent accuracy you would need multiple sensors and the Ping would not be the best for this.

I would lay a grid of infrared sensors for tracking, how big an area are you wanting to track? This sounds interesting to me so I’m happy to help

And one other question. Is it possible to have the arduino track that item that is within a certain range, using this sensor? Because to have a camera snapping a picture at something that is being tracked, would be kind of awesome. lol.

the program I used is called Processing – its the same kind of deal as Arduino. download it from Processing.org and run my sketch – it takes data from the serial port the Arduino is plugged in to.

One note of caution: you can only run one program at a time with the serial port so you do your code for Arduino, shut that down and with the Arduino board still connected to your serial port run the Processing program.

You can make Processing do other things as well to help log the data you get – the Ping sensor your using will have a range of about 4 metres and the further out it gets the wider the detection range (Its conical) so you may need to adjust for this – It depends on how much variance you have in your environment – e.g. wind blowing plants around etc.. will register as a change.

Send me the link when you’re done (if you blog about it) and I’ll chuck a link to you etc.. I’d be really interested in the outcome since I have friends who study Zoology.

Thanks a million, and if this new digital tool works, I’ll be sure to remember the people who helped me!

Bigfoot Researcher,
Vic
aka YouTube UserName: “azbirddog”