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Fire/Flame Detection — Parallax Forums

Fire/Flame Detection

Rusty78Rusty78 Posts: 33
edited 2005-08-11 20:53 in Robotics
Hey,

So I'm new to all this awesome electronics stuff (One Mechanical Engineer here!) but have been lacking direction after finishing "Robotics With the BoeBot". Looking for some direction I've decided to have a go at a robotics competition (Fire Fighter).

I've found 2 possible methods of flame detection :

1) UVTron Flame Detector Package -> <http://www.acroname.com/robotics/parts/R67-UVTRON.html&gt;

2) Devantech Thermal Array Sensor -> <http://www.acroname.com/robotics/parts/R255-TPA81.html&gt;

Just wondering if any of you have experience interfacing either one of these with the basic stamp? I'm leaning towards the latter but it's a hefty 103$ CDN so I want to be as sure as I possibly can that it'll function well with the BS2. It states that a microcontroller capable of communicating via I2C is needed- I'm assuming the BS2 can do this even though I2COUT And I2CIN functions are not available on it.

Any info/feedback would be greatly appreciated guys.

Cheers!

R.K.

Comments

  • PalCPalC Posts: 5
    edited 2005-08-04 23:02
    Although this is my first post in the Parallax forums, I thought I might have an idea related to this sort of application that could bear some merit.

    Something I'm working on at the moment, in the same general area as your project (Fire/Flame Detection) is a single-degree of freedom system for finding the greatest difference in light intensity after a servo sweeps moves a sensor back and forth through a set of known positions.

    So far I've outlined a general behavior, and written some actual code for the apparatus which will consist of a single stationary CDS Cell/resistor combination and a moving RC combination.

    Using RCTime, I determine the difference between the moving and nonmoving sensor and the servo position at which said difference occurs--and then write that value into the EEPROM, and continue the sweep. A large difference between the ambient light value and the light value seen by the sweeping center is used to indicate the presence of a flame (Or really bright light).

    After each sweep is complete I sort the values (By using a for-next loop) and discard all but the largest. I now have the direction of the greatest difference between the ambient light and the swept light, likely the direction of the fire. I posted the sorting code on my Basic Stamp Site here

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  • Rusty78Rusty78 Posts: 33
    edited 2005-08-11 20:53
    Hey PalC

    ············· Sorry for the late reply...and thank you very much for your input. What you're doing sounds very interesting..I've actually decided on using a thermal array, but am planning on using a tilt/pan servo combination to sweep an arc..from there on looks like I will be building a system similar to yours. I hadn't thought of storing the data in an eeprom...thanks! I'll keep you informed on how it goes.

    Cheers!

    R.K.

    P.S. For sure programming a microcontroller is sexy...although my girlfriend would differ...but it sure beats all that horrible television she watches!
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