VE1210/12/14 - Family of Sonar Sensor ICs

Members of the VE1210/12/14 family of ICs are designed for use in air sonar systems for short-range distance measurement and proximity sensing. Each IC is designed to drive an ultrasonic piezoelectric transmitter to produce a burst of sound waves, and to detect echoes reflected back to the source from any nearby objects or surfaces. The echoes are sensed and converted into an electrical output by a piezoelectric receiver, and in many applications the roles of transmitter and receiver may be shared by a single piezo element.

Circuits in the VE1210/12/14 family amplify and filter the echo signals to facilitate the detection of weak echoes typical of small or distant objects, and to support reliable threshold detection and time-of-flight analyses.

VE1210

3-wire interface, analog output, and gain setting is programmable in EEPROM; gain is fixed for each ping-echo cycle

VE1212

3-wire interface, analog output, and default gain setting programmable in EEPROM; gain can be configured to ramp up during each ping-echo cycle; interface via pulse-width encoding

VE1214

2-wire interface, digital output, and default gain setting programmable in EEPROM; gain can be configured to ramp up during each ping-echo cycle; interface via pulse-width encoding