Infrared people detectors Street prices on the infrared peo- ple detectors are dropping very fast, so now is a good time to review how those electronic devices work. Sev- eral important uses now include bur glar alarms and occupancy sensors. Any object not at a temperature of absolute zero will radiate heat. At lower temperatures, a black body ra- diation pattern will be produced. A human will normally radiate at 98 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to other objects in the room which will typically radiate at a 70-degree range. A human body is a very weak radiator which becomes even more so when compared against the am- bient. Figure 1 is a typical curve of human body radiation in a normal room. As you can see, the radiated energy is centered on the eight-mi- crometer range in the far infrared. One sensor which is capable of detecting the radiation from a person is known as a pyroelectric infrared detector. They are available at a very low cost from the Amperex division of Phillips, among others. As we'll see shortly, Amperex has lots of good ap notes and data sheets available. 1661 Wdd¥ ~ _RADIO-ELECTRONICS ~ N A pyroelectric infrared detector consists of one or two detectors that, in turn, input to a field effect tran- sistor (FET) source follower. The basic detector is a capacitor, across which several hundred microvolts DC will be generated in the presence of a warm and non-moving human body. The detectors are often used in side- by-side differential pairs that are im- aged slightly differently. They then tend to cancel out stationary sources. One very big gotcha here: The sen- sors are basically a capacitor so they cannot indefinitely produce a DC out- put. Even the tiny bias current of a FET’s gate is enough to flatten any long-term DC level. Thus, the pyroelectric infrared detector is able to respond only to changing levels of infrared energy. Stationary sources are ignored. So, the trick is to make the infrared signals appear to be rapidly chang- ing. One obvious way is to have the person run through the beam. That can produce a usable transient. But something better is clearly needed. The traditional method was to chop the beam by putting a bladed fan in NEW FROM DON LANCASTER HARDWARE HACKER STUFF Hardware Hacker Reprints Hor lll 24.50 Incredible Secret Money Machine 13.50 CMOS Cookbook 24,50 TTL Cookbook 19.50 Active Filter Cookbook 19.50 Micro Cookbook vol | or Il 19,50 Lancaster Classics Library 109,50 Enhancing your Apple | or Il 17,50 AppleWriter Cookbook 19.50 Apple Assembly Cookbook 21.50 Absolute Reset lle & Iic 19.50 Enhance | or lt Companion Disk 19.50 AppleWriter CB or Assy CB Disk 24,50 POSTSCRIPT STUFF Ask The Guru Reprints |, Hor Ill ° 24,50 LaserWriter Secrets (He/Mac/PC) 23,50 PostScript Show & Tell 39,50 Intro to PostScript VHS Video 39,50 PostScript Beginner Stuff 39.50 PostScript Cookbook (Adobe) 46.50 PostScript Ref. 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Somehow you have to gather the infrared energy from your area and concentrate it on the detector sur face. While mirrors are one solution, a plastic Fresnel lens is better. Now for the tricky part. Instead of making the lens operate uniformly over the surveyed area, it is purposely striped so that there are strong” and “weak’’ sensing areas. A typical lens pattern is shown in Fig. 2. As the person walks through the beam or otherwise moves, they travel be- tween the strong and weak lens areas, creating more of a varying sig- nal than they would otherwise. Figure 3 shows you a schematic of a simple people detector using a dual-element pyroelectric detector and a quad op-amp. The Fresnel lens has strong and weak areas that alter the strength of the infrared signature of amoving person. Thatis sensed by the detector and routed to a x 600 AC amplifier. The combined frequen- cy response of the detector and the amplifier is in the 0.3- to 5-Hertz range. That is usually optimum for most people movements. The output of your amplifier is routed to a window detector or dual comparator. The detector will output a signal on any sudden change in the infrared signature, Usually, the output of the window detector is routed to a counter of some sort to minimize false alarms. In security applications, an alarm output is created. For the occupancy detectors, the lights are quickly turned on, and then left on for a se- lected number of minutes. A fifteen- minute delay is often optimum for people who are usually sitting at a desk or bench. Each time they move, the on time gets extended. One commercial source of ready- to-go occupancy sensors is Leviton. They fit in an ordinary power outlet. Occupancy sensors can dramatically reduce the power bills in most larger commercial buildings. Another alternative to pyroelectric detectors is the Kynar Piezo Film from Atochem (formerly Pennwalt). While less sensitive to infrared and much more tuned in to motion or vibration, this approach can let you integrate your lens and sensor into one single thin assembly. While the electronics involved in people detection are both simple and straightforward, your mirror or lens design is not. Thus, you are better off using some already developed and - debugged commercial lens/detector combination than trying to work one up from scratch.py Fresnel lens and detector FIG. 2—SINCE PRYOELECTRIC INFRARED SENSORS are capacitors, they cannot holda DC or stationary level. To emphasize changes in motion, special Fresnel lenses are often used that have “hot” and “cold” areas as shown here. 39K 10K 39K ed HW MW 045 56K 1N914 ipF Fresnel Lens 330K 4.7p FIG. 3—A “PEOPLE DETECTOR” intended for use as an office lighting control. The output goes high on any motion detection that would increase or decrease the input far infrared signature. Pyroelectric infrared detectors for movement sensing. Technical publication #134, 1984 Remote level sensing using pyroelectric infrared detecters. Technical publication #135, 1980 Low cost remote sensing radiometer using the RPY89 infrared detector. Technical publication #138, 1980 Low cost automatic light switching using passive infrared sensors. Technical publication #147 February 1985 Ceramic pyroelectric infrared sensors and their applications. Technical publication #163 Passive infrared (PIR) intruder alarms. Technical publication #213 April 1986 Movement sensing using a multi-element fresnel lens. Amperex ap note, November 1988. a KRX10 dual element pyroelectric infrared sensor. Data sheet, September 1988. KRX11 dual element pyroelectric infrared sensor. Data sheet, September 1988 RPW100 dual element pyroelectric infrared sensor. _ Data sheet, September 1988 Fresnel lens data sheet and explanatory notes. Phillips data sheet, April 1986 FIG. 4—AMPEREX AP NOTES and data sheets on pyroelectric infrared detectors.Figure 4 lists some of the more readable Amperex ap-notes and data sheets on people detecting. It is a very good starting point for picking up all the infrared sensing basics.