Underwater Sonar

LoopyByteloose

I have been thinking that it might be possible to create underwater sonar with hacking an ultrasound sensor to do most of the work.

The sensor would obviously need to be waterproofed for reception. But it one could use an underwater speaker driven by a power amp to boost the ping and have it driven by the ultrasonic sensors output. You might get some genuine DIY sonar.

The main rationale is that many tweaters will output in the ultrasound range even if they were not designed to do so. So creating a greater power output will allow measurement of greater distances.

Underwater speaker housings do exisit. So the only bit of trouble is getting the underwater ultrasound sensor to work.

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PLEASE CONSIDER the following:

Do you want a quickly operational black box solution or the knowledge included therein?······

···················· Tropically,····· G. Herzog [noparse][[/noparse]·黃鶴 ]·in Taiwan

pharseid

· What does an ultrasound transducer cost? Because you can buy just a sonar transucer if you want to do the electronics yourself.

-phar

LoopyByteloose

Well, I think I paid $15 for my ultrasound range sensors. I'll have to take a look at sonar transducers. Do you have a source for something that cheap or under $50USD?

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PLEASE CONSIDER the following:

Do you want a quickly operational black box solution or the knowledge included therein?······

···················· Tropically,····· G. Herzog [noparse][[/noparse]·黃鶴 ]·in Taiwan

MSDTech

Doing just a quick Google search, I found the following on sale for $47. Of course, the Garmin 90 complete at Wal-Mart is $100. (Just think of all the spare parts you can get from one of these.)

http://www.tigergps.com/garmin1043500.html?productid=garmin1043500&channelid=BIZRA
I would suggest you go to your a local sporting goods store that has a good supply of gadgets for fishermen.


Post Edited (MSDTech) : 7/7/2008 10:00:05 PM GMT

pharseid

·· No, I haven't seen sonar transducers for less than $50 (decades ago I remember seeing military surplus transducers sold for a song and wondering what anyone would do with them), but if these are the typical ultrasonic range finder sets i think they would not have nearly the power rating that sonar transducers do.

-phar

LoopyByteloose

Forgive me for being slow to get back, but it does seems there is some room for experiment with audio tweeters.

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PLEASE CONSIDER the following:

Do you want a quickly operational black box solution or the knowledge included therein?······

···················· Tropically,····· G. Herzog [noparse][[/noparse]·黃鶴 ]·in Taiwan

pharseid

· I'm not sure this is exactly on subject, but I've often wondered how difficult it would be to create a sonar equivalent of phased array radar, you know, use a bunch of ultrasonic transducers to create a steerable sonar beam (that is, steerable electronically and not mechanically).

-phar