Ultrasonic Rangefinder with separate reciever and transmitter.

Projects General Guidance
1

Hello. This is going to be long winded, but any response would be greatly appreciated. I am not totally new to arduino, but am a far cry from an expert.

Basically, I am looking to make an ultrasonic rangefinder, effective out to about 4 feet. The distance I am interested in is of a very specific point, hence the separate transmitter and receiver, and not just a parallax ping sort of thing. I guess my question, then is if there is anything out there pre-made to do this that doesn't involve much modification. The best I have found so far is using 2 of the parallax ping things (PING))) Ultrasonic Distance Sensor - Parallax) and disabling the transmitter on one and the receiver on the other. (http://revision3.com/tbhs/robotluggage). Other ones I have seen involve lots of custom op-amp work, and building of circuits to achieve the required gain, and is something I am looking to avoid. Does anyone know of anything like this?
Would I be better off achieving this through IR?
I am assuming that the transmitter and receiver need to be more or less facing each other?
Is the possibility of having multiple sets of these working in close proximity non-existent, or is there a way to have them at different frequencies, or on different "channels" so that multiple sets can work close together without interference?

My catalyst for the thought process for this project was dog fences, which have some kind of radio wave emitter-receiver system. I am assuming that obviously the receiver does not need to be facing the emitter, so what would it take to accomplish this using the above mentioned means (or a different means)?
http://www.petco.com/product/6533/PetSafe-Wireless-Instant-Fence-Pet-Containment-System.aspx?cm_mmc=CSEMGoogleAdExtProd-_-Dog-_-Dog%20Training%20%26%20Behavior%20-%20Low%20Price-_-692131&gclid=CLDymdTriLwCFU_NOgodeFsAhw)

Anyway, any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.

2

Sonic

Laser
http://www.phoenixgarage.org/show_article/167

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@Alabama652, hi is it possible for you to give me some advice on how you disabled the transmitter/receiver on the 28015 parallax ping sensor?

I would really appreciate it!

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Not totally clear on what the OP is trying to do ("The distance I am interested in is of a very specific point" what does that mean?...oh, I see it's an old question), but to answer MoleForBrains :slight_smile: question:

I just de-soldered the receive transducer of my TX module and de-soldered the transmit transducer of my RX module.

It's probably not even necessary to remove the receive transducer from the TX module, because at least in my case, I'm not using the echo back to the TX (or the ping from the RX) for anything. And normally the TX ping will reach the RX before the RX ping would echo back to itself, so there's no need to remove the transmit transducer from the RX module.