The Tomorrow Lab team is back for Season 4 of our YouTube series, Potentially Genius, sponsored by DigiKey! This season we have lots of new components to play with, new guests to impress and of course, a broad array of inventions to share with our audience. To help usher in the spring and summer seasons, the team came up with a new device that helps its users engage with nature in a new, fun way!
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Our guest for Season 4, Episode 1 is Raul Hernandez Arthur from Infineon Technologies, who shows us Infineon’s brand new UTR11 radar sensor. Arthur explains that what makes this sensor special is its sensitivity. The radar sensor sends electromagnetic waves, being able to detect millimeters of movement, which bounces back towards the built in antenna which receives the movement signals. Possible options for tracking movements range from gestures, liquid level detection, a curtain closing, data collecting from appliances, etc – interrupting the data collected is what Arthur believes is most exciting and interesting about this new product.
Raul tasks the team to find a unique application for the UTR11 radar sensor that shows it’s large sensing range, fine accuracy, multi-object detection, all-weather functionality, and ability to sense through materials. The Tomorrow Lab team brainstormed three ideas: a ball speed and distance measurement device for sports and games, a range responsive lighting system for outdoor activities, and then a window mounted bird presence alarm which when triggered, takes photos. The Bird Alert idea was the winner – bringing all the sensor’s special features all together and allowing a fun way to engage with nature!
The two main DigiKey components we purchased for prototyping were an Adafruit Battery and a Feather ESP32 V2 bluetooth transceiver. Tomorrow Lab’s partner Ted Ullrich and product development engineer Ginger Lau worked together to discuss what tests should be completed to better understand what the team can and cannot do with the sensor. They settle on testing the radiovelocity, range, presence and threshold capabilities.
Lau and Jesse Klein, Tomorrow Lab’s senior industrial designer, discuss housing options for the device. Klein shows sketches on their iPad, and explains the considerations of being able to stick to a window, the sensor triggering the smartphone camera whenever a bird comes in front of it. Klein settled on a ‘stand-alone sensor package,’ design which features a sealed plastic housing which is built around two suction cups that adhere to a window. The radar sensor looks through the plastic window and the smartphone can be set at any desired angle. The entire ‘package’ contains the wingboard, microcontroller, battery and sensor that all slides into the housing effortlessly.
Before 3D printing the housing, the team had to make sure that the sensor could detect an object that was bird-sized and within close range, so they settled on using an orange on a string in order to test the electronics – success!
Ullrich and Klein meet to chat about how all the various components come together. Klein explains that the radar sensor is pointing out towards the window through the opaque plastic housing and through bluetooth when a bird shows up in front of it, a picture will be taken. Ullrich quips that this is all happening without any lens or anything that looks like an eye to an animal!
The team sets up the device for final testing – did a bird come by our office window?
In the final presentation, the team gets to show off their success! A bird comes to visit our office window just past sunset overlooking Long Island City! Arthur is pleased, and says there are many other use cases for the same exact setup – like video, lighting and sound. Arthur said, “we nailed it…this idea is out of the box and can see the potential…and would like one for their office!”
We cannot wait to see who else visits our office throughout the seasons! Be on the lookout for upcoming Potentially Genius episodes in the coming months!
For more bird action, check out this PG episode where the team built a bird microphone.
And if you have a “potentially genius” idea that you want to bring to life, connect with us here to discuss how we can bring your idea to life.