Parking Assistant Project

So, I’ve made some progress with my Earth mainboard (NETMF v4.4 by @Justin, Bluetooth, Flash, STM32F411). It now has a VL53L0X time of flight sensor attached. The project is designed to be a parking assistant for our garage so we don’t pull in too far. The board will sense when the garage door opens and start ranging via the sensor. When the back end of the car passes the sensor, the board will send a notification to our phones (hopefully) via Bluetooth to tell us to stop. That’s the theory anyway.

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Is the board going to be on the car, or on the garage door?

If it’s the latter, I’d be concerned about any potential lag in reconnecting the BT when your phone is back in range. Even if the board is in the car, that could be a concern, given how frequently my car stereo fails to reconnect BT with my phone.

@devhammer - No, it will be mounted to the wall. I said, “hopefully” in the original post as I understand that the board may not connect to the phone in a timely fashion. If that doesn’t work, then an indicator mounted to the wall will work for sure.

@munderhill, this sounds like an example of what happens when an engineer is allowed to just go wild and create a need that doesn’t exist :wink: Why bother connecting to the phone vs just activating a light or sound? Maybe use the sensor to extend a home automation configuration (Node-RED?) and have the overhead lights flash or change color when you reach the stopping point. I’ll be watching!

And your point is? :joy:

That we’re all a bunch of nerds… :wink:

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string tied to the roof with a tennis ball on it, that will touch the windscreen/back when you get in the right spot?

Yeah I know, geeks want to geek out :slight_smile: I’m cool with that, and fully want to support your habit :smile: When can I buy? :wink:

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Since when do we need an excuse for anything we want to build?

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Different car lengths make this a non-optimal solution as I want the maximum amount of space at the front of the cars.

@ianlee74 - Yes, we are!

Exactly what I use. And I still sometimes manage to hit the fridge in front of the parking spot. :joy:

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My wife will still find a way to try to pull her SUV in to the livingroom.

My wife drove into the dining room in two houses. The solution was to build a house with the dining room away from the garage.

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Get an old stop sign to mount on the wall and put some ultra bright red LED’s around the thing. Ultrasonic sensor pointing out, anything gets within preset range light 'em up!

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Wait, what? You people actually use your garage to park a cars in? That is not the way I was raised. Where do you store all of your “perfectly good stuff”?

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… in the garage. :slight_smile:

Hey at least it keeps the wife from trying to drive in to the livingroom again.