I wanted to create a replica of an IR guided missile as a project, and I don’t know how to exactly program it and never really found useful info online. I wanted the concept to be like this: on the missile, there will be an IR camera, and a target (specifically that emits IR light) will exist somewhere. I thought of a program that would draw a 2d graph for the IR camera, where the center of the camera view will be the (0, 0) point. The camera will spot an IR light source and “lock” onto it. It will then check for the position of the light source, relative to the graph of the camera, and then the missile would move the servos controlling the fins, to zero out the target (meaning, the missile moving its fins mid-air, to get the target into the (0, 0) point). I still dont have a camera module and it would be good if someone recommends me a cheap one.
what if you just started with a pair of IR detectors that are mounted at a slight angle toward one another such that if the target were directly in front of both, each would detect an equal amount of light, and if the target were off to one side, one detector would detect more light than the other.
the servos would use this imbalance to reorient the detectors to align them with the target
The Arduino-compatible Pixy2 camera can automatically track colored objects or LEDs, or when equipped with an IR filter, an IR light source.
Should be plenty on the Sidewinder.
may be interested in quadrant photodiodes
I saw videos explaining how it works, but never really an arduino replica. If you know a video, i’ll be happy to see it
Amazing! Thanks
That actually is a good idea, but the detectors need to have an output that is very precise in decimals, as light spreads out and not in a single line
I wonder what that means.
but they are at angles, so they are sensitive to the relative direction
Oh no, I thought he meant that the detectors would be flat, so as the light moves around the detectors, they would have almost the same value, but not quite the same in a decimal scale. Hope you understood
No light detector has a uniform, position- or orientation-independent response. Most have a cosine response (angle to the vertical) or even stronger angular dependence.
Before raising such obviously uninformed objections to a suggestion, do yourself a favor and study the data sheet of the proposed item. You will learn something as a result.
Well I raise the “objections” as a way to actually learn, I don’t mean to raise them as objections to suggestions, I use those questions to get responses from people that provide more information so I can know.
That approach certainly does expose your ignorance!
I don't know if it is still available, but the video experimenter shield is useful for this sort of thing.
A few years ago, lacking a kitten, I built a two wheeled laser dot chaser using one, a simple mono CMOS camera, and a Uno.
Nice visual feedback for debugging too.
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