First Completed Project - Social Distance Meter with sideways LCD

T-Bone

After playing around with the Basic Stamp and Propeller for a couple of years, I finally completed a project. This unit functions but is not intended to be a serious tool. It's more of a conversation piece for outside gatherings. Family and friends have gotten a kick out of it.

Components: Propeller Mini, 4x 20 LCD, Piezo speaker, and Ping sensor. Programming is in BlocklyProp.

I'm particularly proud of my use of the 4x20 LCD in sideways mode. I had to create the character set and write a subroutine to "print" them. My character set includes the number "11" because it was doable and because the unit gives dimensions in feet and inches. Note, if the distance includes 10 inches, I just round that to 11.

I used a 9V battery to keep the footprint small, but the LCD drains it pretty fast. Also note that the piezo is silent when the distance is > 6 feet, and the tone gets higher and faster as the distance closes.

A short clip of the unit in action is here: https://youtu.be/Y57_m9unnTY

Enjoy!

banjo

Wow, impressive!

Bob Lawrence (VE1RLL)

Excellent !! How do you tell the distance?

T-Bone

Hi Bob, the distance is measured using a PING))) Ultrasonic Distance Sensor (SKU 28015 at Parallax).

BlocklyProp visual programing language makes it very easy to read the distance with the PING))). Cheers, Tom

evil_aaronm

Here's a similar project from earlier this year, using FlexGUI and C:

https://www.nutsvolts.com/magazine/article/build-a-social-distance-detector-monitor-using-the-propeller-2

Ludis

Nice job. Can be difficult to fit everything in a small form factor.

T-Bone

Ludic, I agree. I really like working with the Prop Mini for that reason. If this were a serious application, I would probably need more Amp-hours than a 9V battery can hold. Cheers, Tom