How to increase the detection distance on Arduino KY-032 obstacle Avoidance sensor?
The wizecode page has some nice info. However the R5 pot (near the EN jumper) does not change the duty cycle but directly the current to the IR LED - still affects the brightness though. Too much current seems to trigger false positives - depends on your additional optical shielding. I put some black heat shrink tubing over the sensor - with a hole punched in for the sensor to see though.
Also the R6 pot does not really &quot;fine tune&quot; the frequency, more like &quot;coarse tune&quot; - even a small nudge can detune by a kHz, greatly reducing the sensitivity.
If you use the EN jumper, a suddenly appearing object gives a short pulse, but then the disturbance signal suppression kicks in turns sensitivity down and 'unsees' the object. Also slowly appearing objects are not recognized for that reason. Only very near objects (a few cm) give a strong enough signal to overcome that sensitivity attenuation.
What I found somewhat irritating: Setting EN to LOW lets the IR LED steady on instead of off, which I would have expected. That might irritate the sensor more than necessary. Also draws more power (maybe even a lot, depending on R5 current setting).
Funny enough, you can get a somewhat analog behaviour from this sensor if you measure how long it takes from activating the EN pin to the sensor output getting low. The nearer the object is, the faster it reacts. Near objects take ~190us, farther objects more than 400us. Not nearly a linear behaviour though. Also depends on distance, size, angle, IR reflectivity and IR LED power.
However it can detect a person in more than 1m distance.