DIY sonar scanner (practical experiments)

I worked for a medical ultrasound company in the late 1980s, where we did phased array beam steering with very elaborate FPGAs, DSPs, and only the very highest level processing with general-purpose microprocessors. Staff was dozens and dozens of very talented electrical engineers and programmers. What you've done by yourself with just a contemporary microcontroller is extremely impressive!

Really really nice work!

That was absolutely outstanding. Incredibly good job! Very cool project

I don't comment often, but man, after two decades working in cellular wireless data network engineering, this is the best phased array explanation I've ever seen. The visualization you did, the solenoids in water, the pick and place plotting, and the overlay at the end each by themselves were awesome. But showing all three was just amazing. I've tried to explain this to peers on numerous occasions and it's a difficult concept to grasp without seeing it. Very well done.

I have to say it. THIS IS YOUR BEST VIDEO EVER. I was kinda getting sad that you didn't upload that frequently anymore, but the wait was well worth it! Hut ab mein Freund :)

Wow, you visualizations are top-notch! The best visualization I've seen on the subject, and mostly practical too!

As a professional programmer, I really love your 'coding' intermissions xD the one with drill and glove was hilarious!

If you have taught yourself about phased arrays and gone on to develop this experiment without help from anyone else then I truly admire you. This is brilliant work. 👏🏽

Holy production quality batman! Good job and it was real fun watching you toil over this project on livestream.

Your effort in making this, from the device design itself to the video filming/editing is OUTSTANDING!

13:48 - "Let me display the sonar as an overlay": Blew my mind. I understood how it works. Tks

Finally someone with a local pcb manufacturer as sponsor instead of a chinese one.

this is legitimately the coolest DIY project I've ever seen. I've seen the videos of the little Arduino sonar projects that rotate back and forth like old fashioned radars, but to see a demonstration of a modern phased array radar using the same method is absolutely amazing.

Really well done, in particular the effort that went into explaining phase arrays on a level better than most science communicators would do. Happy beamforming!

Same technology used at the lab where I worked 50 years ago to steer seismic arrays, spread out over hundreds of miles, to locate earthquakes. Obviously can't pick up seismometers and move them about, but phased array math does it just fine. Good collaboration of geophysicists and electrical engineers.

This is precisely the density of information, which nearly every course should have. It is a lot of work has been done and that is why it is such a cool and concise explanation. Thank you for that! :)

As an aircraft avoincs apprentice in the 70's I worked on weather radar systems that had multi KW magnetrons, physical wave guides and mechanical dishes that swept an arc. At that time the new tech stuff was coming in with phased slot arrays, gunn diodes and digital signal processing. Absolutely mind blowing shift in tech. Got a lot of redundant really strong magnets out of it though.

Long time ago, I tried to build something similar- the biggest issue with doing a phased array like this is the sidelobes. You really need some small transducers- if memory serves (without my handy copy of Skolnik's Radar handbook nearby), best spacing is about 0.7 of the wavelength. without that kind of spacing, the sidelobes (things outside the 60 degree sweep) have nearly as big a return as the objects within the sweep. Your simulation seems to show this? What may get you even better resolution is a Synthetic aperture setup (SAR, or sidescan sonar) Cool thing about SAR is that you can do it with an FFT. At 40KHz, you need about 5mm spacing. Way smaller than any transducers I could source at the time (25ish years ago). Mind you, I did this with a PIC16C71 (UV Eraseable!) that has 288 BYTES of RAM and an 8 bit A/D converter, and all in assembly! You can do a variant with a "zig-zag" of the transducers so at least in the far field, the spacing is pretty close and you can reduce the sidelobes. Worked on it for a bit but... LOOK A SQUIRREL!

Apart from being a great explanation of phased arrays, the production quality is awesome in its own right. The visuals, including overlaying the dolls, are so good! And I too enjoyed the coding 'methodologies' :) And the reversing skit!

Great work! An idea: since you have a closed loop testing rig, maybe you could tune the emitters with a matrix of weights. For each sensing location record the decibel level, with perhaps a bit of modulation of each emitter's output level. let's say you expect to receive X dB at that point, and you vary emitter A +- 5 dB, but only record -4.8 to +4.7, you can then correct the power output on each to reach the desired output. Repeat this for each emitter, so you have a vector of tuning weights for the target location. Repeat that yet again for each target location (could be 1, 2 or 3 dimensions). So you end up with a calibration matrix and can use it to precisely tune the emitted waveforms to have more consistent power densities where your beam intersects the target, and so a more consistent return to analyze and then a higher resolution display result. Maybe :)