HACKRC Creates Arduino LIDAR with Three VL53L0X Boards

This project uses Raspberry to drive a robot. The Teensy was upgraded so that it could read LIDAR data.

Cabe Atwell
3 years agoSensors / Robotics

HACKRC has created an Arduino LIDAR system with a trio of VL53L0X boards to transmit three distance data string to serial — tested on an Adafruit Trinket M0 and Teensy 4.0. This project consists of a few VL53L0X Time of Flight Distance Sensors, along with a Teensy 4.0, two Actobotics aluminum parts, and an Adafruit Trinket M0.

It’s simple to run one VL53L0X sensor with the Python example code. However, it’s more difficult to run two or more because it requires resetting each sensor and setting the I2C address. The address is lost every time it reboots, so they need to be set each time.

The Teensy 4.0 has more available pins than the Trinket M0. Using three VL53L0X boards causes the pins on the Trinket to max out, but another 20 boards could be appended to the Teensy. HACKRC upgraded the Teensy so that it can read LIDAR data. Voltage, current, and temperature sensors were also included, and then that data was added to the data string already being sent.

A small Python program reads the USB serial data and displays it on the screen. This code was used by HACKRC on a Raspberry Pi to read the distances from the Arduino running the VL53L0X code connected to the Pi’s USB port. The code uses distance readings to drive a robot as well.

Latest articles
Sponsored articles
Related articles
Latest articles
Read more
Related articles