Need help Sourcing part (Ultrasonic Transducer HY12N)

Thread Starter

Coughdrop

Joined Apr 3, 2022
3
Hello!!

I hope i am posting this in the right place,

I am trying to fix a Dreamcast peripheral that uses Ultrasonic Transducers to sense 2 Maraca controllers.
there are 4 of these transducers in total, 1 in each maraca and 2 on either side of a about a meter long sensor unit you put on the floor, like this it's able to measure vertical and horizontal movement.

However recently one of the maracas has started acting up, this is a very common problem on these, and i was able to trace the problem down to one of the Ultrasonic Transducers in one of the maraca's being jittry, as swapping the one in from the other maraca made it work fine.

I need some help sourcing the part i need to replace, i've seen people say on an old forum post in 2004 that they were replaceable with the Ultrasonic Transducer HY12N from a site called Maplin based in the UK, however they don't seem to have them in stock anymore.

One of the things i am confused by is that i can't find any transducers online for sale here in the Netherlands, just Sensors and Recievers, even though those parts look the same as both the parts in the Maracas and the sensor bar. I did read that transducers do both sending and recieving so i don't think those parts would do the job. however i have seen people say that the senders can be used to send and recieve if the voltage can be measured.

Any help would really be appreciated, these maracas sets are expensive and lots of them don't get use cause of the old sensors simply giving up, which makes the whole controller unusable. having an easily sourceable part would be great to keep these up and running.

Here are some pictures of the components on the boards.

And here is the part i was able to find which looks the same cosmetically.

I'm sorry if i left any important details out! please reply if i should provide any more information.
Thanks for the read and i hope someone can help!!
 

AlbertHall

Joined Jun 4, 2014
12,345
These sensors can be used for both transmit and receive but they can be optimised to favour one or the other. In the link supplied by @Delta Prime you can see the bottom is inscribed with a T or R to let you know which would be best for which function.
 

Thread Starter

Coughdrop

Joined Apr 3, 2022
3
Hello there, welcome to AAC!:)
Ultrasonic transducer type T40-16 (order code HY12N)
https://en.aliradar.com/item/327990...ducer-probe-Air-Ultrasonic-Ceramic-Transducer
These sensors can be used for both transmit and receive but they can be optimised to favour one or the other. In the link supplied by @Delta Prime you can see the bottom is inscribed with a T or R to let you know which would be best for which function.
Thank you both for your reply! Sadly the linked trancievers do not seem to be available anymore, on Aliradar or my version of Aliexpress. What i forgot to mention is that they need to be the same size as they pressure fit into the casing when it's screwed together. the silver ones i've found seem to be about twice the size, so i sadlt think these won't fit in there :(

So is it just Transducers that can be used for both? neither need to measure a super big distance, just from the maracas which you hold normally at about chest hight, head hight and hip hight to on the floor, so it never exceeds 3 meters. Would the Transmit ones or the Recieve ones be used in the maracas?
 
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