The SRF04 was designed to be just as easy to use as the Polaroid sonar, requiring a short trigger pulse and providing an echo pulse. Your controller only has to time the length of this pulse to find the range. The connections to the SRF04 are shown below:

The SRF04 Timing diagram is shown below. You only need to supply a short 10uS pulse to the trigger input to start the ranging. The SRF04 will send out an 8 cycle burst of ultrasound at 40khz and raise its echo line high. It then listens for an echo, and as soon as it detects one it lowers the echo line again. The echo line is therefore a pulse whose width is proportional to the distance to the object. By timing the pulse it is possible to calculate the range in inches/centimeters or anything else. If nothing is detected then the SRF04 will lower its echo line anyway after about 36mS.