Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Arduino with Radio Shack Parallax motion sensor

Well, that didn't take long. It's been less than a week, and I'm already feeling quite familiar with the Arduino platform. I just mashed this circuit together in less than 5 minutes (in fact it took longer to video tape than it did to make)!

I picked up the new Parallax motion sensor circuit yesterday for $10 from Radio Shack. Parallax has done a great job of making these chips accessible and easy to use by making the documentation available online. I would recommend all parts vendors to be this accessible, in fact, since it makes circuitry approachable to the novice, and reduces headaches for experts too:







Here's a video of the motion sensor "in action" (pardon the pun):



The device only has 3 pins: one that connects to ground, one that connects to +5V, and a signl pin that I've connected to Arduino pin 8. Then, I've connected an LED to Arduino pin 5, which I turn on for a second whenever the motion sensor is triggered. Here's the source code.

6 comments:

Tim said...

hey, do you know if i would be able to set this up to trigger something that is plugged into an outlet to come on, instead of an LED?

Matt said...

Well, it took a while, but the answer is yes... I wanted to do the same thing, so I made a project called the RelaySquid that does exactly that. You could plug the digital pin into the relaysquid, and it would toggle a relay that would control an outlet. http://www.liquidware.com/shop/show/RS/RelaySquid

Ben Cozzens said...

What kind of Relays are you using in the Squid? Better yet where can I buy them?

moy said...

Hi, cool job, I have a question, do you know if your able to get an analog read out of this motion sensor? I'm trying to get a read of HOW much motion is going on.

Thank you.

woolyunderbelly said...

Hello...

I was wondering how many LED's can you hook up to one sensor? Can they be continuously connected?

Thanks
-la

woolyunderbelly said...

Hello...

I was wondering how many LED's can you hook up to one sensor? Can they be continuously connected?

Thanks
-la