Interfacing 40kHz ultrasonic transducer transmitter receiver with arduino

Hello guys!

I am fairly knew when it comes to soldering and microcontrollers and interfacing them.

Therefore I want to describe my situation:
For a research project at our university we need a ultrasonic Transmitter/Receiver. I found a promising product on ebay:
http://stores.ebay.com/Engineeringshock-Electronics/Ultrasonic-/_i.html?_fsub=2369229018
40kHz ultrasonic transducer transmitter DIY electronics kit with custom PCB
40kHz ultrasonic transducer receiver DIY electronics kit with custom PCB
(I get these pre-built)

The idea is to emit one ultrasonic signal into the air and record the reflected signal from an object (the echo).
That means, we only need the measured frequency over time that we later use for further analysis on a computer.
The problem is that I don't know how to connect the Transducer Receiver/Transmitter DIY Kit to an arduino board or if this
is even possible (but I think so).
The programming part to read out the signal would not be the problem, because I read already a lot of stuff and books.

I hope you can help me. Any idea is appreciated!

Dominik

Are you saying you're trying to measure the Doppler frequency of the echo signal?

The idea is to emit one ultrasonic signal into the air

What is the significance and meaning of "one" here?

Why not just use a Ping))) which is often used with the Arduino? It's a 40Hz basic ultrasonic sensor. You pulse it using one of the digital IOs and then you switch it over immediately for an echo.

@AWOL
I only want to send one "short" signal and not a continuous ultrasonic pulse over a long time.
For example: If this ultrasonic pulse is hitting a wall, I want to record the reflected echo of this
ultrasonic pulse from the wall. Then I want to read out the incoming frequency from the pin of the ultrasonic sensor.
That means I have a time series in the end and can do something like this later (top left corner):

Every object reflect a ultrasonic pulse in a different way and I want to do research with it.
So I think I don't mean that I try to measure the Doppler frequency of the echo signal.

@normanc
I thought the Ping))) sensor is only good for distance measuring? But I don't need this in particular.

Atfer all are the sensors from engineeringshock (http://www.engineeringshock.com/ultrasonic-kits.html) usable for my purposes?

I only want to send one "short" signal and not a continuous ultrasonic pulse over a long time.

"pulse" usually implies a "short" signal - a continuous pulse is pretty much an oxymoron.

I don't think you've picked the right technology here.

The receiver you've chosen is pretty much an echo/no echo received proposition - there is none of the received waveform at the output.
Even if you hacked the receiver to extract the received and amplified signal, the Arduino's ADC isn't fast enough (by at least an order of magnitude) to extract the kind of information you're after.

For example: If this ultrasonic pulse is hitting a wall, I want to record the reflected echo of this
ultrasonic pulse from the wall. Then I want to read out the incoming frequency from the pin of the ultrasonic sensor.

Reading the frequency of a fixed frequency pulse hitting a fixed wall and returning will not change the frequency of the returned signal. Only if there is a difference in relative motion between the emitter and reflection surface would there be a detectable Doppler shift in return frequency pulse. Most ultrasonic distance sensors are simply a time-of-flight detector based on measurement of sent Vs return pulse timing.

Lefty

Thank you all for the clarification.

The thing is I already found some working devices but there are very expensive.
At first I wanted to look up if I can built something similar.