DIY Infrared Sensor Module

Have you ever wanted to make a line following robot but the infrared sensors were too expensive for you? Do you want to upgrade the robot in my other instructable?

Well this instructable comes in two stages, Stage 1 is the prototyping stage, where you build the circuit on the bread board and debug it for design flaws.

Stage 2 is fabrication where I’ll teach you how to create a strip board product that you can plug straight into your robot.

The good thing about this tutorial is you’re able to do many things with these sensors.

Also, if you’re from the UK and have a maplin store near you, you’ll be able to get some IR transmitter and receivers for 99p (They’re side facing LED/phototransistors, so you can have a low-profile sensor module), More on this at the end of the instructable.

1x Arduino
1x Bread board
1x Strip board
1x Wire reel, black
1x Wire reel, red
1x Wire reel, green
2x Infrared LED (Maplin/Sparkfun)
2x Phototransistor (Maplin/Sparkfun)
2x Red 5mm LED (Maplin/Sparkfun)
2x 1k Ohm resistor
2x 220 Ohm resistor
Wire cutters
Wire strippers
Helping Hands
Heat shrink tube (Not used)
Heat source (Not used)
Soldering iron
Solder

Step 1 Let's Get Started

You want to take your bread board and your infra red LED’s and photo transistors and place them side by side (1 hole apart) in the bread board, repeat for the other infra red pair.

Now let’s start wiring up the infrared LED’s first, place a 220 Ohm resister in the same row as the IR LED cathode then wire it to ground, and make sure to wire both. Next you need to wire up both of the IR LED anodes to the power rail.

Comments

[steveoondyou]

sweet sweet, I like the line idea for drawing a path. have to try it on an rc car next, or a lawnmower.

[Eax5]

Hey, Great instructable exactly what I was looking for.

I am trying to build my own line following robot. I would like to build my own line detector.

I am pretty sure that I can make lets say 6 of these in a row. But I am wondering if they will be interfering with each other?

[Dominion-Network]

Glad you liked the instructable!

If you use narrow band IR emitters and maybe the heat shrink tubing to block out most of the ambient light out I don't think it'd interfere with each other to much, also depends on placement.

I wish you luck in building your own line following robot, mine is currently on the fritz (Doesn't like turning).

[Eax5]

Cool, how are you detecting the line? Did you simply buy an ir line detection kit?

[Dominion-Network]

Well in the spectrum of light black absorbs all light whilst white reflects it, the example code simply tells the robot what to do when certain amounts of light is detected, and no I didn't buy an IR detection kit, this is scratch built trial and error.

[compsfreak17]

Can you please provide a schematic?
I'm having trouble understanding this and already burnt out a detector.

[Dominion-Network]

Thank you for reminding me, I've been meaning to add a schematic for a while, if you check step 1 you should notice the schematic there, hopefully it'll help you.

[Dylan Richards]

im having trouble making it it starts to spark

[Dominion-Network]

What exactly is sparking? Are you able to narrow it down so I can help you

[Dylan Richards]

maybe

[Dominion-Network]

I'm sorry, I don't understand, how does 'maybe' help me help you?

[Krzys26]

Can I use this circuit and the program, run by Ziolog microcontroller or it has to be exact arduino controller, reason for this I have to design module for my capstone project making the robot that my group is desiging fallow the tape as well, it will be security system looking for motion around with camera activated after it finds it , using Zilog microprocessor, I dont know if code will be simillar or not, if so, modyfing code would be hard with zilog?

thanks:

Chris

[Dominion-Network]

The code is Arduino Based, I've not had a look at Ziolog so I couldn't tell you if you'd need to edit it much, but the actual module itself is just hardware, you can connect it to any microprocessor you want

[imakethings]

can u use it to measure distance?

[Dominion-Network]

Unfortunately no, it's not that powerful, or good lol the only distance you'd be able to measure is about 1 - 5ish cm away from it.