Magnetometer Question

Help & Support Robot Parts
1

Hello, and in advance thank you for taking the time to read this.

I have been recruited by a local shop to create a simple drive through detection system that requires no incisions into the pavement and minimal external changes. After browsing for a small while I thought it might work well to use a magnetometer to detect incoming vehicles. However, I am not very familiar with such devices as the courses I took going through school didn’t cover much electronics and was mainly focused on software programming.

Anyways; to the point! Would this magnetometer be sufficient for detecting incoming vehicles based on change in magnetic field? (robotshop.com/ca/en/parallax … odule.html) Or would I need something more powerful? The vehicles will only be max 1.5 meters away from the device at any given time.

Thank you :slight_smile:

2

I don’t think a compass module is going to do it for you. You probably need a big loop on the pavement.

Alan KM6VV

3

Would you be willing to advise me on how that could be done?

I was looking through a few articles about this but I am not sure how to create said “Big Loop” and furthur more how I could access that data through a micro controller.

Any point in the right direction would be much apreciated!

4

Google is your friend.

“vehicle detection sensor”

Alan KM6VV

5

As Alan indicated, a magnetometer is not great for vehicle detection. Most use a range detection system:
robotshop.com/en/lidar.html