DIY sonar scanner (practical experiments)

I worked for a medical ultrasound company in the late 1980s, where we did phased array beam steering with very elaborate FPGAs, DSPs, and only the very highest level processing with general-purpose microprocessors. Staff was dozens and dozens of very talented electrical engineers and programmers. What you've done by yourself with just a contemporary microcontroller is extremely impressive!

Really really nice work!

I don't comment often, but man, after two decades working in cellular wireless data network engineering, this is the best phased array explanation I've ever seen. The visualization you did, the solenoids in water, the pick and place plotting, and the overlay at the end each by themselves were awesome. But showing all three was just amazing. I've tried to explain this to peers on numerous occasions and it's a difficult concept to grasp without seeing it. Very well done.

As a professional programmer, I really love your 'coding' intermissions xD the one with drill and glove was hilarious!

I have to say it. THIS IS YOUR BEST VIDEO EVER. I was kinda getting sad that you didn't upload that frequently anymore, but the wait was well worth it! Hut ab mein Freund :)

That was absolutely outstanding. Incredibly good job! Very cool project

13:48 - "Let me display the sonar as an overlay": Blew my mind. I understood how it works. Tks

If you have taught yourself about phased arrays and gone on to develop this experiment without help from anyone else then I truly admire you. This is brilliant work. 👏🏽

Wow, you visualizations are top-notch! The best visualization I've seen on the subject, and mostly practical too!

Holy production quality batman! Good job and it was real fun watching you toil over this project on livestream.

Same technology used at the lab where I worked 50 years ago to steer seismic arrays, spread out over hundreds of miles, to locate earthquakes. Obviously can't pick up seismometers and move them about, but phased array math does it just fine. Good collaboration of geophysicists and electrical engineers.

Finally someone with a local pcb manufacturer as sponsor instead of a chinese one.

Very cool! You can actually use alternating scan rates to see further than your sample rate. Assuming you are scanning/listening constantly (so you transmit a pulse, wait to receive for t time then transmit again exactly when that time is over) you are actually seeing distant items in your near field as their echoes are still returning to your receiver (2t period). The only time you cannot hear them is during the transmit period. If you alter the scan rate, you can cohere them together (only the coherent signals will add up) over time and extend your physical scan distance. The different transmit rates are effectively a distance phase.

I helped remove the sonar transducers from USS Fox CG 39 during an overhaul in '89. It took two men to lift them. They were covered in sharp cooling fins and there was no good way to hold them. We had to carry them up six decks of ladders, the length of the ship to the quarterdeck and down the gangplank to a truck.

This just blew my mind. Everything about it. The Presentation, examples, explanation, shots, editing, and method used to impart understanding on this topic are just… It’s just art at this level. also… The rolling pin got me.

Your effort in making this, from the device design itself to the video filming/editing is OUTSTANDING!

Really well done, in particular the effort that went into explaining phase arrays on a level better than most science communicators would do. Happy beamforming!

this is legitimately the coolest DIY project I've ever seen. I've seen the videos of the little Arduino sonar projects that rotate back and forth like old fashioned radars, but to see a demonstration of a modern phased array radar using the same method is absolutely amazing.

Great demonstration! You did an outstanding job using water waves to show wave interference patterns. Back in 1985 I was using ultrasonic transducers similar to the ones you are using to create a binocular sonar system with a single transmitter and two receivers. Unfortunately, I did not realize how large the amplitude of the sonar signal was and over a single weekend I damaged my hearing. That was a real bummer and I stopped working with ultrasonic transducers. But about ten years ago I started working again on a binocular sonar system for my robot. This time my transmit level is much lower. It took me a while to create the algorithms to correlate the two echoes, but after a couple years I now have a working binocular system which can map object ( X & Y) six feet in front of the robot within a +/-15° cone. The accuracy is better than I expected, about +/-3.5cm.

Apart from being a great explanation of phased arrays, the production quality is awesome in its own right. The visuals, including overlaying the dolls, are so good! And I too enjoyed the coding 'methodologies' :) And the reversing skit!