Way hey! It turns out I'm not an idiot, and one of the sensors is broken! Upon taking it apart, it's easy to see why these sensors were so cheap. Loose wiring, rubbish components and the inside of the sensors are filled with what looks like PVA glue to hold the whole thing together. That's ok though because yesterday I figured out that I need different sensors. I kind of already knew that, but I managed to confirm it. I now realise that if this project is going to work, I'm going to need four sensors placed around the bike. Most ultrasonic that I can find online seem to have an effectual angle of 15*. What this means is, from the centre line, ultrasonic sensors can pick up movement 15* to the left and 15* to the right, giving them a total coverage of 30*. If I put two ultrasonic sensors at the back of the bike (covering a total of 60*) and then one sensor on each side of the motorcycle (Facing roughly 20* away from the bike and again covering a total 30*) I can get pretty much a full 120* coverage of the road behind me. Ultrasonic sensors have a range of about 5 meters. If you assume that the average width of the lane on the road is about 3 meters, and a bike is sitting in the middle of its lane, they should, in theory, be able to cover traffic from both sides approaching in blind spots. Heres a small diagram of everything I drew. The length of the range is 50mm (for 5meters), and the lane width is 30mm (3m for road width) so it all should be to scale.
I've got a meeting with my advisor about all this sensor information next week so hopefully they like it all.
If they don't I have no idea what I'm going to do.
That's all for today, I'm off to celebrate not being an idiot.
Thanks.
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