Published February 19, 2020 © GPL3+

Smart SONAR System

A Smart Sonar System which alerts the user when it spots objects or enemies within range.

IntermediateFull instructions provided12 hours3,796

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Arduino UNO

Ultrasonic Sensor - HC-SR04 (Generic)

Bolt IoT Bolt WiFi Module

SG90 Micro-servo motor

Jumper wires (generic)

Breadboard (generic)

Optional

Software apps and online services

Arduino IDE

Bolt IoT Bolt Cloud

Bolt IoT Android App

Telegram Messaging

The Processing Foundation Processing

Mailgun Email Alert

Story

1. Introduction

Sound Navigation and Ranging or SONAR for short is an old system developed for navigation purposes which date way back to the 1490s, times of great multitalented personality Leonardo da Vinci, who is believed to be the first person to make use of the technology. Passive SONAR systems developed in 1918, were successfully used during World War I by armies of various nations to counter the increasing threat of their enemy's submarine warfare. This is one of the most significant uses of SONAR.

After that SONAR System was developed more and more and to this time it is still developing. SONAR soul principle is based on the sound which is nothing but vibrations of the air column. The Smart Sonar System uses an Ultrasonic sensor for this purpose. An Ultrasonic sound is a higher frequency sound than the upper audible limit ( ≥ 20, 000 Hz ) of human hearing. Other sensors such as microwave sensors, photoelectric sensors, Passive Infrared (PIR) Sensor, noise detectors, etc. can also be used for this purpose. This particular project is a take on integrating Automation which is modern technology and an old school technique such as SONAR.

The applications of SONAR are endless such as defense, underwater navigation, medical imaging, and metallurgy. But this project primarily focuses on detecting objects or enemies and alerting the user through a messaging app when an object or enemy is within range.

2. Hardware Configuration

Steps to set-up hardware connection for the project.

1. Plug-in the Arduino Uno into a PC/Laptop.

2. Power on the Bolt IoT Wifi module, Servo Motor, and Ultrasonic sensor using 5V supply on the Arduino UNO using a breadboard.

3. Connect the Trigger pin of the Ultrasonic sensor to the 9th digital pin of Arduino.

4. Connect the Echo pin of the Ultrasonic sensor to the 10th digital pin of Arduino.

5. Connect the Signal Pin of the Servo motor to the 11th digital pin of Arduino.

6. Connect Rx and Tx pin of the Bolt IoT WiFi module to the Tx and Rx pin of the Arduino UNO respectively.

7. Provide Ground to all connections through the GND pin of the Arduino on the breadboard.

8. Recheck all the connections and boom! You are good to go!

Arduino UNO

Entire Circuit

P.S:

You can also power Servo motor using the 3V3 pin on Arduino.
You can simply power on the Bolt IoT WiFi module using a simple USB cable.
Please check the COM port is properly selected eg. COM3 or COM5 before verifying the code and uploading it. You can check it in Tools >> Port in Arduino IDE.

3. Bolt IoT WiFi Module Setup

You can easily set-up the Bolt IoT WiFi module using theBolt IoT Wifi application and following the steps mentioned in the training.

Bolt IoT WiFi Module in circuit.

4. Creating a Telegram channel and Telegram ID.

Please refer to Bolt IoT training for the in-depth explanation regarding this. https://trainings.boltiot.com/

5. Creating a Mailgun account for Email Alerts.

Please refer to Bolt IoT training for the in-depth explanation regarding this. https://trainings.boltiot.com or head over to https://www.mailgun.com/ Sign-Up to create your own domain.

6. Setting up the Configuration(s) File.

Please refer to Bolt IoT training for the in-depth explanation regarding this. The codes are given in the code section.

7. Software Configuration

Steps to set-up software connection.

I have used two libraries from Arduino IDE which are in-built

1. #include <Servo.h>

2. #include <SoftwareSerial.h>

#include <Servo.h> is the library used to control the servo motor and rotate it to and fro with the desired angle and speed.

#include <SoftwareSerial.h> is used to establish a serial communication (software) between the Bolt IoT WiFi Module and the Arduino UNO.

3. Run the Arduino code for the servo motor.

4. Set threshold to the desired value ( Threshold = 120 in my case ) in the configuration file.

5. Run the Python code for Telegram (alert messaging app) and Mailgun ( Email alert) on any operating system having In-Built python such as Ubuntu (terminal) or download Ubuntu or Linux Os through virtual machines such VMWare or VirtualBox to run them on your windows host machine.

6. Or you can just visit https://cloud.digitalocean.com/ to create droplets and use these OS online.

Sensor values lesser than the threshold value. ( No alerts generated).

Sensor value greater than the threshold value ( An Alert is been generated).

Alert recieved 2

Alert recieved ( Telegram Mobile App)

Alert recieved through Mailgun.

6. If you face any difficulty while performing the above steps watch Bolt IoT training videos again or reach out on Bolt IoT forum.

P.S: Complete Codes are provided in the Code section.

8. Processing App Output

Visualization and Mapping ( Angles in (degrees) v.s Distance (in c.m) )

Run the code in the processing app and the output window will show this:-

No object /enemy detected within range.

An object/enemy detected within range

Code

from boltiot import Bolt,Email
import json, time, requests 
import email_conf, conf  
maximum_limit = 120 #the maximum threshold of distance value 


mybolt = Bolt(email_conf.API_KEY, email_conf.DEVICE_ID)
mailer = Email(email_conf.MAILGUN_API_KEY, email_conf.SANDBOX_URL, email_conf.SENDER_EMAIL, email_conf.RECIPIENT_EMAIL)


def get_sensor_value_from_pin(pin):
    """Returns the sensor value. Returns -999 if request fails"""
    try:
        response = mybolt.analogRead(pin)
        data = json.loads(response)
        if data["success"] != 1:
            print("Request not successfull")
            print("This is the response->", data)
            return -999
        sensor_value = int(data["value"])
        return sensor_value
    except Exception as e:
        print("Something went wrong when returning the sensor value")
        print(e)
        return -999
def send_telegram_message(message):
    """Sends message via Telegram"""
    url = "https://api.telegram.org/" + conf.telegram_bot_id + "/sendMessage"
    data = {
        "chat_id": conf.telegram_chat_id,
        "text": message
    }
    try:
        response = requests.request(
            "POST",
            url,
            params=data
        )
        print("This is the Telegram URL")
        print(url)
        print("This is the Telegram response")
        print(response.text)
        telegram_data = json.loads(response.text)
        return telegram_data["ok"]
    except Exception as e:
        print("An error occurred in sending the alert message via Telegram")
        print(e)
        return False
while True: 
    print ("Reading sensor value")
    response = mybolt.analogRead('A0') 
    data = json.loads(response) 
    print ("Sensor value is: " + str(data['value']))
    try: 
        sensor_value = int(data['value']) 
        if sensor_value > maximum_limit:
            print ("Making request to Mailgun to send an email")
            response = mailer.send_email("Alert", "Object/Enemy is closing in! " +  str(conf.threshold) + \
                  ". The current sensor  value is " +str(sensor_value))
            response_text = json.loads(response.text)
            print ("Response received from Mailgun is: " + str(response_text['message']))
        if sensor_value >= conf.threshold: 
            print ("Sensor value has exceeded threshold")
            message = "Alert! Sensor value has exceeded " + str(conf.threshold) + \
                  ". The current value is " + str(sensor_value)
            telegram_status = send_telegram_message(message)
            print ("This is the Telegram status:", telegram_status)
 
        if sensor_value == -999:
           print ("Request was unsuccessfull. Skipping.")
        time.sleep(10)
        continue
    except Exception as e: 
        print ("Error occured: Below are the details")
        print (e)
    time.sleep(10)

"""Configurations for Smart_Sonar.py"""
API_KEY = "XXXX"                 # This is your Bolt Cloud API Key
DEVICE_ID = "XXXX"                    # This is the device ID and will be similar to BOLTXXXX where XXXX is some numbers
telegram_chat_id = "@XXXX"            # This is the channel ID of the created Telegram channel. Paste after @ symbol.
telegram_bot_id = "botXXXX"           # This is the bot ID of the created Telegram Bot. Paste after bot text.
threshold = 120                      # Threshold beyond which the alert should be sent

// Includes the Servo library
#include <Servo.h>
#include <SoftwareSerial.h>  
SoftwareSerial mySerial(0,1);
// Defines Tirg and Echo pins of the Ultrasonic Sensor
const int trigPin = 9;
const int echoPin = 10;
// Variables for the duration and the distance
long duration;
int distance;
Servo myServo; // Creates a servo object for controlling the servo motor
void setup() {
  pinMode(trigPin, OUTPUT); // Sets the trigPin as an Output
  pinMode(echoPin, INPUT); // Sets the echoPin as an Input
  Serial.begin(9600);
  myServo.attach(11); // Defines on which pin is the servo motor attached
}
void loop() {
  // rotates the servo motor from 15 to 165 degrees
  for(int i=15;i<=165;i++){  
  myServo.write(i);
  delay(30);
  distance = calculateDistance();// Calls a function for calculating the distance measured by the Ultrasonic sensor for each degree
 
  Serial.print(i); // Sends the current degree into the Serial Port
  Serial.print(","); // Sends addition character right next to the previous value needed later in the Processing IDE for indexing
  Serial.print(distance); // Sends the distance value into the Serial Port
  Serial.print("."); // Sends addition character right next to the previous value needed later in the Processing IDE for indexing
  }
  // Repeats the previous lines from 165 to 15 degrees
  for(int i=165;i>15;i--){  
  myServo.write(i);
  delay(30);
  distance = calculateDistance();
  Serial.print(i);
  Serial.print(",");
  Serial.print(distance);
  Serial.print(".");
  }
}
// Function for calculating the distance measured by the Ultrasonic sensor
int calculateDistance(){
 
  digitalWrite(trigPin, LOW);
  delayMicroseconds(2);
  // Sets the trigPin on HIGH state for 10 micro seconds
  digitalWrite(trigPin, HIGH);
  delayMicroseconds(10);
  digitalWrite(trigPin, LOW);
  duration = pulseIn(echoPin, HIGH); // Reads the echoPin, returns the sound wave travel time in microseconds
  distance= duration*0.034/2;
  return distance;
}

import processing.serial.*; // imports library for serial communication
import java.awt.event.KeyEvent; // imports library for reading the data from the serial port
import java.io.IOException;
Serial myPort; // defines Object Serial
// defubes variables
String angle="";
String distance="";
String data="";
String noObject;
float pixsDistance;
int iAngle, iDistance;
int index1=0;
int index2=0;
PFont orcFont;
void setup() {
 
 size (1200, 700); // ***CHANGE THIS TO YOUR SCREEN RESOLUTION***
 smooth();
 myPort = new Serial(this,"COM3", 9600); // starts the serial communication
 myPort.bufferUntil('.'); // reads the data from the serial port up to the character '.'. So actually it reads this: angle,distance.
}
void draw() {
 
  fill(98,245,31);
  // simulating motion blur and slow fade of the moving line
  noStroke();
  fill(0,4);
  rect(0, 0, width, height-height*0.065);
 
  fill(98,245,31); // green color
  // calls the functions for drawing the radar
  drawRadar();
  drawLine();
  drawObject();
  drawText();
}
void serialEvent (Serial myPort) { // starts reading data from the Serial Port
  // reads the data from the Serial Port up to the character '.' and puts it into the String variable "data".
  data = myPort.readStringUntil('.');
  data = data.substring(0,data.length()-1);
 
  index1 = data.indexOf(","); // find the character ',' and puts it into the variable "index1"
  angle= data.substring(0, index1); // read the data from position "0" to position of the variable index1 or thats the value of the angle the Arduino Board sent into the Serial Port
  distance= data.substring(index1+1, data.length()); // read the data from position "index1" to the end of the data pr thats the value of the distance
 
  // converts the String variables into Integer
  iAngle = int(angle);
  iDistance = int(distance);
}
void drawRadar() {
  pushMatrix();
  translate(width/2,height-height*0.074); // moves the starting coordinats to new location
  noFill();
  strokeWeight(2);
  stroke(98,245,31);
  // draws the arc lines
  arc(0,0,(width-width*0.0625),(width-width*0.0625),PI,TWO_PI);
  arc(0,0,(width-width*0.27),(width-width*0.27),PI,TWO_PI);
  arc(0,0,(width-width*0.479),(width-width*0.479),PI,TWO_PI);
  arc(0,0,(width-width*0.687),(width-width*0.687),PI,TWO_PI);
  // draws the angle lines
  line(-width/2,0,width/2,0);
  line(0,0,(-width/2)*cos(radians(30)),(-width/2)*sin(radians(30)));
  line(0,0,(-width/2)*cos(radians(60)),(-width/2)*sin(radians(60)));
  line(0,0,(-width/2)*cos(radians(90)),(-width/2)*sin(radians(90)));
  line(0,0,(-width/2)*cos(radians(120)),(-width/2)*sin(radians(120)));
  line(0,0,(-width/2)*cos(radians(150)),(-width/2)*sin(radians(150)));
  line((-width/2)*cos(radians(30)),0,width/2,0);
  popMatrix();
}
void drawObject() {
  pushMatrix();
  translate(width/2,height-height*0.074); // moves the starting coordinats to new location
  strokeWeight(9);
  stroke(255,10,10); // red color
  pixsDistance = iDistance*((height-height*0.1666)*0.025); // covers the distance from the sensor from cm to pixels
  // limiting the range to 40 cms
  if(iDistance<40){
    // draws the object according to the angle and the distance
  line(pixsDistance*cos(radians(iAngle)),-pixsDistance*sin(radians(iAngle)),(width-width*0.505)*cos(radians(iAngle)),-(width-width*0.505)*sin(radians(iAngle)));
  }
  popMatrix();
}
void drawLine() {
  pushMatrix();
  strokeWeight(9);
  stroke(30,250,60);
  translate(width/2,height-height*0.074); // moves the starting coordinats to new location
  line(0,0,(height-height*0.12)*cos(radians(iAngle)),-(height-height*0.12)*sin(radians(iAngle))); // draws the line according to the angle
  popMatrix();
}
void drawText() { // draws the texts on the screen
 
  pushMatrix();
  if(iDistance>40) {
  noObject = "Out of Range";
  }
  else {
  noObject = "In Range";
  }
  fill(0,0,0);
  noStroke();
  rect(0, height-height*0.0648, width, height);
  fill(98,245,31);
  textSize(25);
 
  text("10cm",width-width*0.3854,height-height*0.0833);
  text("20cm",width-width*0.281,height-height*0.0833);
  text("30cm",width-width*0.177,height-height*0.0833);
  text("40cm",width-width*0.0729,height-height*0.0833);
  textSize(40);
  text("Indian Lifehacker ", width-width*0.875, height-height*0.0277);
  text("Angle: " + iAngle +" °", width-width*0.48, height-height*0.0277);
  text("Distance: ", width-width*0.26, height-height*0.0277);
  if(iDistance<40) {
  text("        " + iDistance +" cm", width-width*0.225, height-height*0.0277);
  }
  textSize(25);
  fill(98,245,60);
  translate((width-width*0.4994)+width/2*cos(radians(30)),(height-height*0.0907)-width/2*sin(radians(30)));
  rotate(-radians(-60));
  text("30°",0,0);
  resetMatrix();
  translate((width-width*0.503)+width/2*cos(radians(60)),(height-height*0.0888)-width/2*sin(radians(60)));
  rotate(-radians(-30));
  text("60°",0,0);
  resetMatrix();
  translate((width-width*0.507)+width/2*cos(radians(90)),(height-height*0.0833)-width/2*sin(radians(90)));
  rotate(radians(0));
  text("90°",0,0);
  resetMatrix();
  translate(width-width*0.513+width/2*cos(radians(120)),(height-height*0.07129)-width/2*sin(radians(120)));
  rotate(radians(-30));
  text("120°",0,0);
  resetMatrix();
  translate((width-width*0.5104)+width/2*cos(radians(150)),(height-height*0.0574)-width/2*sin(radians(150)));
  rotate(radians(-60));
  text("150°",0,0);
  popMatrix();
}