Investigating a RCWL 9196 / RCWL-0516 “Radar” motion detector module

A new type of “Radar” motion sensor has been getting a lot of attention in the last couple of months, but no one seemed to know how they worked, so I decided to buy a few of these very cheap devices (sub $1) and investigate possible methods of operation.

The boards I bought use the RCWL 9196, but appear to have identical functionality to those with the RWCL-0516 chip on them

This github site https://github.com/jdesbonnet/RCWL-0516/ contains loads of useful information on these boards, and there is also an excellent video by Andreas Spiess on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WiJJgIi3W0

Where the properties of these devices was explored.

I hope to have taken this at least one step forward with my tests.

The main difference in my approach is that I have connected a wire from the analogue signal output on the only IC on the board, into an analogue input on a STM32F103C8 (aka Blue Pill) board.

The pin I connected to is Pin 12 on U1, (RCWL 9196 and is the output of the 2nd OpAmp in that chip).

(Schematic from Joe Desonnet’s github account)

 

 

My RCWL 9196 board is not exactly the same as this, but the pinout of the IC is the same.

Also the RCWL 9196 is almost identical to the BIS0001

http://www.ladyada.net/media/sensors/BISS0001.pdf

Where pin 12 is labelled as 2Out

 

 

I then wrote a very simple sketch in the Arduino IDE to print both the analogue signal from 2Out and also the normal digital output from the board

 

void setup() {
pinMode(PA0,INPUT);
pinMode(PA1,INPUT);
}
void loop() {
Serial.print(“0,”);
Serial.print(analogRead(PA0));
Serial.print(“,”);
Serial.print(analogRead(PA1)+100);
Serial.println(“,4500”);
delay(10);
}

BTW. The reason I’m writing values of 0 at the beginning of the line of output and 4500 is because the Arduino IDE “Plotter” feature is auto ranging, and if I don’t include a lower an upper bound, the vertical scale constantly changes

Looking at the output when nothing is moving I see this plot

Green is the digital output (in this case its LOW / OFF), and the Red trace is the analog signal, which is close to half the 3.3V Vdd voltage supplied to the board.

Note. The STM32F103C8 has an anlogue input range of 0 to 4096 (12 bit)

 

If I start to wave my hand, starting with a small movement and then increasing, I see this plot.

 

As you can see the hand movement causes an immediate effect on the output of the second OpAmp, but the value has to go above (or below) a threshold before the digital output triggers

 

In this next plot. I was walking towards the sensor, and then stopped.

 

As you can see the digital output holds for around 2 seconds after the end of the input fluctuations.

 

The more interesting thing about this plot are the peaks and troughs at the start where I was walking towards the sensor.

I thought this could be because its sensing the movement of my legs, so I devised a better test where I stood on a chair and dropped an object from the ceiling, and observed the results.

 

I tried a variety of objects, and the best performing object that mimicked the properties of a person moving, turned out to be a damp sponge.

I tried a dry sponge, but it had no effect on the sensor whatsoever, but as soon as I got it wet, it was immediately detected.

 

 

In this plot the sponge is falling about 1m horizontally from the sensor, which is resting on a table about 1m from the ground.

As you can see, there are still multiple peaks and troughs in the output signal.

I know that there was some speculation that these devices work by using the Doppler effect,but this does not appear to be validated my the tests I have done.

So my theory is that the peaks and troughs are caused by reflected signals from objects, interfering with the oscillator / transmitter.
When I say interfering, I mean of wave propagation, where the reflected wave can be in phase with the oscillator or out of phase, resulting in the oscillator drawing more or less current.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interference_(wave_propagation)

From Joe Desbonnet’s github repo,he observed that the oscillation frequency is around 3.1GHz with his module. So assuming my module is similar, then the wavelength of 3.1GHz is around 10cm.

However in my tests, I am not sure the peaks and troughs match exactly with that frequency, and the effect I see if more consistent with perhaps twice that frequency.

 

Doing some tests moving a piece of aluminium foil up and down, approximately 30cm, to 5 cm above the sensor observe these results when moving slowly

 

 

And moving quickly

 

 

What is fairly clear is that the interference is not from a single path, but rather that the aluminium foil (or the damp sponge), is reflecting signals directly from the device, but is also going to be reflecting, some reflections back to the device.

So its a complex pattern of primary and secondary signals, with the strongest effect most likely to be the primary signal straight from the device (transmitter)

Also just to complicate matters, the OpAmp IC is configured so that the output is always trying to return to a steady state.

This can be seen when the device first turns on, and the analogue output initially is at its maximum, and takes around 10 seconds to stabilise to Vdd /2

 

Looking at the schematic and also measuring the voltage from the RF oscillator / transmitter, using an oscilloscope. The oscillator output voltage, rises to around 0.4V very quickly.

However OpAmp 1, in the RCWL9196 is configured as a high gain amplifier (and filter), whose non-inverting input will be initially 0V.

The inverting input is fed from the output of the OpAmp via a resistor and capacitor network, and charges C7 via R6, and the RC network of R4 in parallel with C4

I don’t know if the resistor values on my board are identical to the schematic, but a rough calculation on the RC charge time of the inverting input would be 22uF * 1M = 22 seconds.

But thats the time to get to Vdd not to 0.4V, so I think its highly likely that the 11 seconds startup time, is the time taken to charge C7 to 0.4V.

I observed the fluctuations of the input voltage from the oscillator using my scope, but the change was minimal; at around 4mV, and I was only able to measure this using capacitive coupling on the scope.

So if C7 can charge from 0V to 0.4V in around 10 seconds, then it would compensate for a change in input from the osc (of 0.004V) in 1/100th of 10 seconds, i.e 1/10th Sec (100mS)

This effect is also observable in practice, by moving an object towards the sensor and then holding it. As you normally see a peak or a tough, but very quickly the signal is pulled back to its steady state.

 

I did attempt to increase the value of C7 from 22uF (226) a higher value, in the hope that I could make a much larger time constant, but I damaged the board somehow, whilst trying to do this, so I do not have any results for that test.

BTW. I have 2 boards, but I don’t want to modify the second one in case I damage that one as well.

 

So to sum up…

My hypotheses, is that these devices are a oscillator / transmitter, and that the detection method is by wave propagation interference.

This is consistent with many of the results I observed.

1. Objects moving towards (or away) from the sensor, produce peaks and toughs rather than a steady state offset; which would be caused by the Doppler effect
2. The peaks and troughs are complex, as the interference is generated by reflections of reflections.
3. Waving a length of wire, (which would act as an inductor), near the sensor, produces little or no variation in the output
4. As the unit has a range of around 4 or 5m, and detection does not seem to diminish strongly with increasing distance, it seems unlikely that the effect is being caused by capacitive coupling between the observed object and the oscillator (and its surroundings_

 

And where does this leave us…

Well, at the moment, I don’t see a use for these devices apart from their intended application of motion sensing.

I think that using the analogue output from pin 12, is beneficial, as it can be used to get some indication of the scale of the detection, and would allow the trigger level, and hold time etc, to be controlled in the application (e.g. Arduino sketch).

 

I think if a method was devised to be able to observe the output from the oscillator, without the current system that always returns the output to a mid point steady state, even if the oscillator is not in that state; that perhaps the device could be used more easily to perhaps determine the speed of an object. By determining the time difference between each peak.

However even with the necessary hardware modifications to facilitate this, there would still be the problem of reflections of reflections; which would cause the data to be difficult if not impossible to analyse