Parking sensor on the house

[PrinceNai]

Dear Sirs,

I'm toying with the idea to make myself a parking sensor on the house. The situation is like this: I have a parking space in front of my house for two cars. It is narrow and on top of that the car that goes next to the house must attack it at an angle. Car must be parked like 15cm from the house to be able to normally open the door if the second car is already parked or to leave enough space if it isn't there. By default the tricky spot is mine, of course. I already managed to brush my car on the house once or twice, which did wonders for my mood.

Now to the idea. I'd like to make like a 1,5m long bar with maybe 10 proximity sensors and that many bright LED's. So if I come closer than approx. 20cm to the wall, green LEDs are on, closer than 5cm red lights should go on on the spot where I'm too close. What kind of sensors would you recommend? All the numbers here are arbitrary, length of the bar, number of sensors and distances, so I'd be glad to hear any ideas.

No, my car doesn't have front sensors and I don't want to drill into it to install them :-).

Regards,
Samo

[temtronic]

hmm...
First I'd consider 8 sensors and LEDs. Might be easier to program as a byte of data.
2nd, Maybe ultrasonic sensors ? Probably a lot of them available as 'robot distance' sensors, so economical and easy to buy.
You could drive a red-green LED off 2 I/O pins, though that uses 16 pins, another 8 for sensors adds up to 24 so a 28 pin PIC may work for you, I still like 40 pin devices. You always need extra pins for 'something'.
It'll be interesting to read the replies from others.

Jay

[PCM programmer]

Here is an Arduino project which is similar to what you want:
https://www.mysensors.org/build/parking

[Ttelmah]

I used to have a place that needed precise parking. I just had a bamboo
cane hanging down on cord, and you drove in till you touched this....

[benoitstjean]

@TTelmah... haha, that's funny. Can't go wrong, works all the time. But of course it defies the concept of creating and learning :)

Ben

[temtronic]

Ok, make the bamboo stick 'high tech'.
install RGB LED, XYZ motion sensors, battery and a PIC of course.
When car hits stick, LEDs light up.
Maybe add Bluetooth to talk to your car's 'info center' and display the stick's motions, have car speaker's 'talk to you'.
Actually you could add a small camera in the stick, have the PIC send the image, in realtime of course, of your car coming towards it.

Any other 'upgrades' ????

[newguy]

Old job I had involved tank gauges. Employer wanted to make inroads in a market segment where an ordinary stick reigned supreme. Lots of meetings, consultations, design churn. In the end the initiative was abandoned. Why? Couldn't compete with the price of a stick.

[Ttelmah]

That is so true...
The problem with hi-tech approaches, is they also need power. The stick
still works when the battery is flat....

[temtronic]

aw.... just add a solar cell array, MPPT electronics, auto switching,....
come on guys... add another PIC.....
we need to fill the bamboo tube FULL of electronics !

[diode_blade]

Also you could add a couple of 6146B valves to the stick and have a 100W HF transceiver..