Radar Detector

Tangible project

A great thank you to Rachel, Mo, Kris, and Luke for all the help provided

Design

I’m planning to build a radar detector by using Universal Servo and Ultrasonic Sensor HC-SR04 to control the rotation and detection. Processing IDE, HiLetgo 3.5″ TFT LCD Display ILI9486/ILI9488 480×320 36 Pins screen and Paspberry Pi is also going to be used here for the visualization of serial communication data. I’m also planning to build a wooden box as a protective cover.

Code

Arduino Code

Processing Code

Process

Bug 1 – Servo spinned in 365 degrees instead of 165 degrees as the code instructed

Step1 – Fixed the bug, because the servo used were continous servo, it will always spin out of control

Test 1 – visualization by using processing and the operation of ultrasonic detector

Step 2 – measure and build the wooden box as a protective cover

Bug 2 – try to import processing code into tft LCD screen and raspberry pi but failed, I eventually gave up this part

Step 3- connect everythings togerther

Test 3 – Test whether all the component can be fitted into the wooden box properly

Step 4- drill holes on wooden box to let the wires go through

Step 5 – Combine everything togerther

Final Exhibition

Reflection

This was an ambitious project and since I started by doing everything by myself, the project made me super stressed especially when processing and Arduino serial communication didn’t work. I then learnt how to seek help from fimbel lab members, like Rachel helped me with the wiring, and Mo helped me a lot with debugging and the installation of os system into the Raspberry Pi, even though part of the design still didn’t work, I learnt a lot about how to seek help from other talented people. I also learned that sometimes giving up parts of the plan is not as harmful as I thought it would be. Since I’m doing and designing the project all by myself, I don’t have multiple perspectives in my problem-solving process. When some parts of the project may be easily solved from another’s perspective, I couldn’t come up with a solution.

I’m a computational neuroscience major, and considering what courses I take in and out of my intended major matters a lot in my academic journey. I have to consider the interdisciplinarity of each course I’m taking to have it fully correlated with my research interests. Doing this radar project when I got stuck or spun my wheels when I could have paused to seek other solutions or perspectives. I got stuck on raspberry pi for several hours and no one could figure out what was going on. Giving up using Raspberry Pi and moving on would be a better choice. Pivoting to a new plan was not easy, but considering the time commitment and the feasibility, sometimes I have to learn to give up