What Is the Barra Radar BLE?

In 2023, the US government updated legislation which allows the unlicensed civilian use of 60GHz radars, opening the door for these kinds of radars to enter mass-production globally. This technology is a highly accurate and highly affordable distance and object detection method and unlike ultrasonic sensors, is far less affected by environmental conditions like dust and humidity. The Barra Radar was designed to give a long-life, high accuracy and medium distance (several meters) detection capability to any Digital Matter Bluetooth® hardware by combining a 60GHz radar with a battery-powered BLE beacon in a Barra form-factor. You can pair a Barra Radar BLE with a Digital Matter Bluetooth® gateway device (i.e. G70 Bluetooth®, Oyster Edge, etc.) to enable the following:

• Industrial/agricultural fluid level detection with sub-centimetre accuracy.
• Trailer loaded/unloaded states for containers or goods.
• Door open-closed states for containers and gates.
• Waste receptacle fill levels to alert service teams to a full bin.

Physical Installation of the Barra Radar BLE

The Barra Radar BLE requires 2 AA Batteries in order to function - we have received positive feedback from partners employing Energizer™ Lithium Ultimate for similar applications. While the Barra Radar BLE comes with a magnet under tape in the housing it is currently without function and will not impact the behaviour of the device (updates are planned).

The Barra Radar BLE App

Available on iOS and Android (links coming soon!), we have developed an app to accompany the Barra Radar BLE which will facilitate the following:

1. Modification of Bluetooth Low Energy beaconing behaviour (i.e. chirp rate)
2. Modification of basic radar setup - setting object detection thresholds and scan durations
3. Modification of advanced radar setup.

You can use the app to apply settings to your Barra Radars and view their sensor readings in real-time.
 

Barra Radar Parameters

BLE Advertising:

Advertising Interval Max (ms): max time for the BLE packet to be sent

Advertising Interval Min (ms): min time for the BLE packet to be sent

Tx Power (dBM): power level of the transmitted signal


 

Radar Basic:

Scan Interval (sec): Period between radar scans

Start Scan Distance (cm): Detection start distance

End Scan Distance (cm): Detection finish distance


 

Radar Advanced:

Weak Peak Detection: Allow any detected peak below the strong peak threshold to be detected.

Max Step Size (cm): Outlines the distance between radar pulses when searching for an object. The lower this is, the better the resolution, but the larger the energy consumption

Fixed Strength Value (dBM): strength threshold in which to filter out peaks. This is the strength at which the peak is classified as strong.

Fixed Amplitude Value: amplitude threshold in which to filter out peaks. A peak is defined as a middle point that has greater amplitude than its two neighboring points.

Peak Window (cm): the "hysteresis of the measurement". It is how far the peak can drift, e.g., the peak can be +- 20mm before it is detected as a new peak

Rescans: if there is not enough confidence that there has been a state change in the first scan, do a rescan ( this parameter is the maximum number of rescans)

Rescan Period (s): Period between rescans


 

Analog Mapping with the Barra Radar BLE

There are several options for connecting to the Barra Radar BLE to one of our existing Bluetooth® gateway devices, including generating a scoped Barra Radar BLE tag list, filtering for individual tags, or Bluetooth® Tag Analog Mapping. Should you choose to marry a specific Barra Radar BLE to your gateway via analog mapping, the following strings can be pasted into the system parameter boxes.  

Custom tag type:

255,16,0,4F067900,20,11

Analog mappings: 

0,0,2,1,,0,2,3,1,,0,4,2,1,,0,6,3,1,,0,8,0,0,,0,9,2,1,

This will result in data being written to the following six analogs sequentially, so ensure that you have enough room!

The information contained, in order is:

1. Distance 1 (the strongest distance)
2. Strength 1 (how strong was the signal?)
3. Distance 2 (the second strongest distance)
4. Strength 2 (how strong was the signal?)
5. Object detection flag (1 means something was found within the configured range)
6. Battery voltage (2x AA batteries)

How Can I Get Started?

To become a beta tester for the Barra Radar and gain early access to the app, please contact Digital Matter Support and state your willingness to join our beta program for this device.