I wanted to test limits of the Bushnell Elite 1500 laser range finder (LRF). Took it out to an abandoned air force base yesterday where finally I could find alot of uninterrupted flat land with some structures at appropriate distances.
Result is I could range the control tower at a max distance of 1675 yards, but I could not get a reflection back at any distance beyond that, for example 1700 yards. The tower was painted a light yellow which is favourable for IR reflection, supposedly.
Now the tower is a pretty tall structure, so I tried some smaller buildings around 10 ft tall. The surprising discover came when I was ranging one of these smaller bldgs at around 600 yards, and a distance of 1280 came up. Turns out that the IR pulse was reflecting off a street sign at that distance way behind the buildng. This street sign was a square yield sign and you know how small those are, at that distance, compared to a 10 ft trailer like bldg.
So clearly if you can have a high reflection gain target to point at, you can get pretty good results from this cheap (compared to Vectronix for example) unit. I suspect with a large enough retroreflective target you could get this Bushnell to hit a mile of range. Even though the specs say up to 1600 yards, it's firmware is not limited to that range if you can get enough IR signal back to the sensor. So my plan is to shop around for surplus high reflectivity signs from the city here and setup it next to my steel and then set up ranges back from that.
Also if you are looking at building a WiFi wireless range camera... we tested a reasonably directional Wifi client with a 11n router and only to 650 yards before the signal got too weak. So to get Wifi to get out to a mile, for example, we'll need more power and/or very directional antennae.
Result is I could range the control tower at a max distance of 1675 yards, but I could not get a reflection back at any distance beyond that, for example 1700 yards. The tower was painted a light yellow which is favourable for IR reflection, supposedly.
Now the tower is a pretty tall structure, so I tried some smaller buildings around 10 ft tall. The surprising discover came when I was ranging one of these smaller bldgs at around 600 yards, and a distance of 1280 came up. Turns out that the IR pulse was reflecting off a street sign at that distance way behind the buildng. This street sign was a square yield sign and you know how small those are, at that distance, compared to a 10 ft trailer like bldg.
So clearly if you can have a high reflection gain target to point at, you can get pretty good results from this cheap (compared to Vectronix for example) unit. I suspect with a large enough retroreflective target you could get this Bushnell to hit a mile of range. Even though the specs say up to 1600 yards, it's firmware is not limited to that range if you can get enough IR signal back to the sensor. So my plan is to shop around for surplus high reflectivity signs from the city here and setup it next to my steel and then set up ranges back from that.
Also if you are looking at building a WiFi wireless range camera... we tested a reasonably directional Wifi client with a 11n router and only to 650 yards before the signal got too weak. So to get Wifi to get out to a mile, for example, we'll need more power and/or very directional antennae.
