Problem: GP2D12 Sharp IR noise spikes

I am building a largish robot with many Sharp IR sensors. In particular I am using several of the GP2D12s. These are known to create noise spikes on the power rails. Typically, there are 30 mv or so negative and positive spikes, about 10 usec duration each, every 1 ms (each time the internal LED is fired).

I've tried putting 10 uf tantalum caps directly on the sensors and 100 uf caps on the input and output of the regulator. No caps give even bigger spikes. I'm wondering if the electrolytics don't catch the fast pulses (the regulator output also has a 0.1 uf monolithic).

A second "feature" is that 7 D12s take about 200 ma but the regulator, LM7805, gets hot. The mean consumption of one unit is 35 ma but the its peak is 200 ma, presumably during the short LED pulses. Can this low duty cycle peak current, multiplied

7 time, asynchronistically, heat up the regulator?

Suggestions please.

John Piccirillo

Reply to
John Piccirillo
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Hi John. Those devices are pretty noisy, and you need a lot of filtering, especially with 7 of them, as the peak pulse currents are so large. I'm including below an interchange regarding these units that took place on the Front-Range-Robotics yahoo forum. You can't view it unless logged into the forum, so I included the entire text. Terry has some good pictures online. Might help.

Regards the heat buildup in the 7805, this depends upon *both* average load current and voltage drop across the regulator, and whether you have a good heatsink. If using 12v supply [??], you'll have (12-5v)*0.2A = 1.4W. Even that starts to heat up the v.reg.

BTW, you have to be careful when using the GP2 devices on "moving" bots, because of the long readout integration period [about 40 msec], and the fact that they use triangulation, which is highly susceptible to movements.

- dan michaels

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From: "ti_wrex" Date: Sat Sep 11, 2004 8:02 pm Subject: Re: Sharp GP2Y0A02YK 0.2 to 1.5 meter analog distance sensors

Hi Dan, .............

Yes!! Here is a picture of a moving object vs the pulses and output:

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It takes a bunch or readings and "then" outputs a fixed level for the next 40mS. It only give a new reading every 40mS (25 Hz) and that is delayed about 40mS too!!!

BTW - Here is a scope pic of the actual IR signal out of the sensor (blue trace) taken with a 1GHz IR receiver module:

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The IR signal is very powerful and they probably just blasts the poor IR LED with short duration but high current (250mA) pulses.

It might work if you take the above graph into account. But it might be slow... If the robot is moving, goodness knows what problems you could run into. Bottom line is that the sensors response is TOO SLOW... If the point is very small and the objects out there are complex, you may just get garbage data back. You would almost have to come to a dead stop and scan each point (stopped) at the beam width... Not a problem for my outdoor robot since it does things very slowley anyway. Stopping and painfully scanning everything for minutes on end is not a problem.

Sumos have to "think fast" so the slow sensor my be a terrible problem. Things like the object grabbers can spend far more time and may be better suited.

There is no "analog" ground on the sensor!! Those current pulses show up on the main ground wire. (the current scope probe is a fully isolated type)

The solution is to put a big bypass cap on the sensor so all the spikes are kept local to the sensor and not pushed out onto the lines. Here is the spike:

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Now I soldered a tiny 4.7uF 6.3V Tantalum SM1206 cap (DigiKey PCS1475CT-ND) across the connector power leads (+ and -, fits nice ;-))):

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It drastically reduced the spikes:

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It also bashed the ringing and rise time way down:

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This added cap will probably fix the signal distorion "enough" and fix the spikes messing up the rest of the bot's power supplies. It could use even a bigger cap, but this is the one I had here on-hand. They have enough room on the tiny PC board to add a tantalum cap here... Maybe Sharp needs to make a new and improved version ;-)) I worry that the dV/dT "spike current" may exceed the little cap's rating, that will take more thinking the check %:o)) Darn Panasonic does not give V/uS ratings...

BTW - I think you mentioned once what happens when one "plays" with the little screw on the back of the sensor???

Cheers,

Terry

Reply to
dan

I use 8 of these on REGIS, and have been doing so for a while. Basically, each unit pulls more like 300ma when the LED is firing, and can indeed create substantial noise on the power supply. The led runs at

1khz, with a 10% duty cycle.

I did the following to clean up the supply. First of all, I use a separate, heat-sinked regulator (7805) for the board that controls the sensors. Where the battery (12V) power rails attach to the board I used a 220uf electrolytic (I found this value through trial and error). I also had better luck using 100 uf caps across the power inputs for each sensor. Much of this was done through trial and error, but the results are that the PS noise is brought down to nearly nothing.

Note that on my subsequent largish robot, I only used a couple of these as invisible "whiskers", (and one other mounted with a sonar as a supplemental mapping sensor) mainly because not only is powering them problematic, but their narrow cone of detection makes them poorly suited for dealing with obstacles.

I think I posted a bit about this on this NG a few years back. Search the archives if you already haven't done so.

Hope that helps -- tAfkaks

Reply to
The Artist Formerly Known as K

I think it would be a good idea to put the 0.1uF caps on the sensors with the bigger caps. This will help keep the higher frequecncy spikes from the wires between the regulator and the sensor.

Mitch

Reply to
Mitch Berkson

I do use a separate regulator and have a 100 uf cap where you have 220. I guess I need to try several of the suggestions. I always thought that the electrolytics were not very good in passing spikes so I should probably also try putting a 0.1 uf across each sensor (one is already at the power rails after the regulator). Some one suggested that the spikes may be produced by the regulator, being a reaction of the internal op amp trying to keep the input/output differential equal to zero and the delay between the positive and negative spikes, 125 usec, a result of the op amp slew rate. If this is so perhaps the problem is that the regulator doesn't respond quickly enough to the short demand for 300 ma when the LED is fired. In that case the cap on the each sensor should be about 60 uf and a type that can supplying current quickly may be preferable. I'll try 100 uf on each sensor and see what that does.

John Piccirillo

Reply to
John Piccirillo

Thanks,

I'll try all the suggestions in combination. I'd like to know what the real cause is: sensor electronics, regulator response to current demand spike, or whatever.

John Piccirillo

Reply to
John Piccirillo

Good luck -- I really had to do some experimenting before I found something that worked. Let us know what your results are.

Reply to
the Artist Formerly Known as K

One other thing to keep in mind is that the instantaneous demand for current may well exceed 300ma by a pretty large factor, since more than one LED may be switched on at the same instant in time. Obviously, the more sensors you're running, the more acute the problem.

I vote for massive current demand as the underlying cause.

Cheers - m

Reply to
the Artist Formerly Known as K

Update.

I can get the noise down by using 1000 uf caps on the input and output of the regulator for the Sharps. Then the noise is about

25 mv. I stopped there but the problem isn't solved yet. The robot still won't run; the motor has fits of starting and stopping. I suspect the motor driver is having problems so that's the next thing to take a look at. It runs fine if I disconnect the power to the Sharps. Maybe the noise is EMI.

More later.

John Piccirillo

Reply to
John Piccirillo

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