Hi all,

I am looking some technical help to select a distance sensor that can measure the distance of a soccer ball in a controlled indoor environment. I need a sensor that will be able to tell me what height a soccer ball passed over at when kicked from a few feet away. Soccer balls travel at up to 35mph, can anyone recommend an Infrared or ultrasonic sensor that could "see" the ball in this short time and measure its distance???

Ta

 

Slo-mo replay of video, if you can wait for the analysis. Do you need real-time output?

 

Please clarify your intent..
Do you only need the height from the ground at a set point?
Or some distance from something?

Then what sort of accuracy do you require?

 

As wayne mentioned the simplest is to just record it with a camera and have the ball go past a tape measure.

Other solutions would require mounting on the floor or ceiling and then sensing distance from the ball as it passes over or under the sensor.. Now this also assumes you can kick the ball in the same vertical plane as the sensor is reading in...

 

I would need the reading in real time. I wish to measure the height above the floor at which the ball passes, the height will typically be in the range of 0.5m - 2m, mostly at 1m if they are any good at kicking a ball. Accuracy is in the range of +- 0.1m. The kicker will always kick in the same direction (otherwise the kick is nulled) so I only need to find the height from the floor at a fixed distance (1.5m) from the kicking spot. I assume the biggest problem is finding a sensor that can detect and measure a ball whizzing past at such high speeds!

 

I get 35 mph to be roughly 15.5m/s and at a guess I'd say a soccer ball is somewhere between 0.25 and 0.3m in diameter. This gives a transit time of 0.016s (16ms) over a point.

Some kind of broken beam detector comes to mind