Can pay real money for the answer. Is there a device or technology to measure the distance between two nodes?

Question

I am looking for a technology or a device that would enable me to measure the distance between a Base point and the remote node of the device. It should supply me the measurement continuously (like 50 times a second). It doesn't have to be a released product. A technology or a method would be fine.
I am thinking of a radio emitter and a material to reflect it. And calculate the time it bounces back and find the distance. Or calculate the amount of decrease of the power of the signal.
I can pay about 100-500$ for a good answer.

Upon request for additional information I can say that this will be used indoors. Maximum distance is 10 meters. The base device and the node might not see each other. Therefor it cannot be something like IR or laser. The remote device must be small. Max. diameter 3cm.

And even more details. The accuracy needed is milimeters. As I said a method is even fine. I am not expecting to find a ready product for this. I will get it manufactured upon the information I get from here. Thanks to those who answered up to now...

Answer 1

Need more information. How far apart are these nodes? What kind of accuracy do you need?

For distances up to about 3 meters, you can buy an electronic inside micrometer.

For distances of a few kilometers, there are various laser-ranging schemes (check out the "Green Bank Telescope").

Beyond a few kilometers, people usually use GPS, or differential GPS.

Answer 2

You are going to be hard pressed to get that kind of accuracy. First of all, optics are out if the space that the two devices occupy is not open. Your next choice will be RF.

Will these devices be stationary or moving? Are you only interested in distance or is direction (az & el) important.

If distance and/or speed is what you are looking for, you could have the node transmit a pulse and use doppler shift to find distance and speed.

If you need direction also you could use the above for range, and use a mode former and some processing to find the 3-d direction the signal is coming from. If you used a high enough frequency and some substrate material with a high permittivity, this device could actually be kept relatively small.\

Hope that has given you stuff to search on.

What are you trying to do with this?

Answer 3

I don't know how big these remote nodes of yours are, but a very accurate range-finding device involves pulse-firing a laser (which could easily be done 50 times a second) and measuring the time it takes for each pulse to return after being reflected off a mirror surface mounted on the target.

The trick is to use a retroreflector:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retroreflector

so that the light always comes back in the same direction, regardless of the angle at which you hit the reflector.

Answer 4

2 cans and a few string? No, heavily -- i prefer to show something that does look to show on the spot telepathy -- which after all would mean teleportation if certainly techniques do have mass as some experiments point out. it is this: while my mom replaced into coping with metastatic maximum cancers, she replaced into saddled with a "diagnosis" of Alzheimer's via my lawyer sister. The why and how of that's yet another tale. what's pertinent right it is that would mom had bi-weekly visits with the psychiatrist. After a pair of those, and notably one flow to the place I copped a look at the wellness practitioner's notes and diagnosis, I knew i replaced into coping with an customary practitioner interior the sphere. that's, he had little or no theory of what replaced into occurring with my mom, or the muse of her psychological issues. In any adventure, i persisted to apply 10 minutes of her dispensed 50 for my own "scientific care" with the wellness practitioner. He agreed to this. despite the fact that his concept for doing it, right here is what got here up. i spotted that as quickly as we've been conversing that if one person unexpectedly has a sparkling while attempting to bear in mind a recognition or a notice ("you recognize, the action picture the place Cameron Diaz...", or, "it is that music that is going...") -- that the different person promptly gets the 'sparkling' and there you're the two one in each of you with the lacking term or person or action picture or despite the fact that it is on the top of the tongue and it is long gone. so as we normally talk related to the prevalent and high quality of 'Nothingness' -- possibly it is precisely the shortcoming of empirical definition of that factor era which permits it to be so effectively transmitted like, say a equipment is far less stressful to grant than a handful of something it is unwrapped. See what I mean? possibly the errors we are making in conceiving teleportation interior the quantum experience is that we are questioning approximately transporting some confident merchandise while it may be extra logical to transmit as a replace the definitely area that would or could no longer incorporate an merchandise, archives, or an theory. purely a theory.

Answer 5

bounce laser off a mirror at distant point, measure how long takes to return

need a very fast clock for this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_range-finder

and you haven't really specified enough info to provide an good answer

what is the approx distance between nodes

what the required accuracy of measurement

Answer 6

you can buy a 102 0-Inch to 1-Inch .001-Inch Graduation Micrometer from amazon...i have no idea what that is but i need the money :D

Answer 7

i need you to be alil more specific plz

a PM is fineif you will send me more info..

are you talking networking, gps, wifi, blue tooth, wired networking, avionics, outerspace???