Aspesi4
Newbie level 1
Hey everyone,
I need some help with a basic analog circuit design. I have an EE degree, but I have not dealt with basic analog circuit design in a few years. So I need your input to figure out this problem. What we're trying to design is for a bean bag toss game. Basically you throw bean bags at a ramp (ply wood that's maybe 3'L x 2'W) with a 6" diameter hole in the middle. We would like to design a detector of some sort that when the bean bag passes through the hole, some lights go off confirming it went through. We were thinking of utilizing IR for this instead of a mechanical switch.
I have a few questions for this design:
- An IR emitter and detector component such as this https://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2049723.... how does it work? My understand is that since they're matched it can be utilized as a switch. The emitter will always transmit but when the detector doesn't see the IR, the circuit will drop out until the bean is reconnected. Is this correct?
- Now since the bean bag will fall through the hole and happen in a fraction of a second, I need some circuity to detect the beam has been cut and relay to a second circuit the turn on or flash some lights for a say 3 seconds. I can use a cap with some relays or a timing relay which I think is the easiest solution. What are your thoughts?
We're looking to do this on the cheap and would like to keep the total cost around $15 per board (two boards total). Probably operate off of a 12V battery.
Any help or recommendations is appreciated.
Thanks
Dan
I need some help with a basic analog circuit design. I have an EE degree, but I have not dealt with basic analog circuit design in a few years. So I need your input to figure out this problem. What we're trying to design is for a bean bag toss game. Basically you throw bean bags at a ramp (ply wood that's maybe 3'L x 2'W) with a 6" diameter hole in the middle. We would like to design a detector of some sort that when the bean bag passes through the hole, some lights go off confirming it went through. We were thinking of utilizing IR for this instead of a mechanical switch.
I have a few questions for this design:
- An IR emitter and detector component such as this https://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2049723.... how does it work? My understand is that since they're matched it can be utilized as a switch. The emitter will always transmit but when the detector doesn't see the IR, the circuit will drop out until the bean is reconnected. Is this correct?
- Now since the bean bag will fall through the hole and happen in a fraction of a second, I need some circuity to detect the beam has been cut and relay to a second circuit the turn on or flash some lights for a say 3 seconds. I can use a cap with some relays or a timing relay which I think is the easiest solution. What are your thoughts?
We're looking to do this on the cheap and would like to keep the total cost around $15 per board (two boards total). Probably operate off of a 12V battery.
Any help or recommendations is appreciated.
Thanks
Dan
