Makers and electronic enthusiasts searching for a small laser sensor may be interested in a new Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign which currently has 19 days left to run and is raising money to take the tinyLiDAR laser sensor into production.
tinyLiDAR has been designed to be used with the Arduino platform and simplifies access to cutting-edge smartphone technology, say its creators. Watch the demonstration video below to learn more about tinyLiDAR features and functionalities.
Don’t pull your hair out! Now you can use ST’s latest Time-of-Flight sensor easily with tinyLiDAR. Its the low cost “easy button” of distance sensors. We’ve put all the smarts inside our onboard 32-bit micro so you won’t have to dedicate your Arduino to the task. Ultra-fast, fully-featured, accurate, low power and low cost – what more could you ask for?
Have you heard of LiDAR? Chances are that you probably have. It’s fast becoming the new buzzword in the news lately. It’s the cool new tech that can be found in all sorts of new products like driverless cars, drones and even smartphones.
So what is it? LiDAR stands for “Light Detection and Ranging” and if you Google it, you’ll find a bunch of references to long range airborne surveying systems. That was the old-school LiDAR. Today’s LiDAR is much more compact, lightweight and lower power so its finding its way into many areas that were unimaginable in the past.
LiDAR works just like RADAR but instead of sending out high frequency radio bursts, it uses infrared laser light. Professional LiDAR systems like those used in autonomous cars incorporate ultra-fast Analog to Digital converters, rotating platforms and high-end optics so they’re generally not very hobbyist friendly. Fortunately, for those that don’t need the ultimate in ranging distance and measurement speed, there are simpler and lower cost options.
tinyLiDAR is a miniature (about the size of a US Quarter) laser distance sensor module that’s super easy to use thanks to a dedicated ultra low-power 32-bit microcontroller. Using ST’s official API along with our custom firmware that we wrote from scratch, this microcontroller translates simple I2C commands from any host to the more complex real-time interactions necessary for controlling the new VL53L0X time of flight sensor from ST Microelectronics. Unlike other generic VL53L0X sensor boards, only tinyLiDAR allows low level controller boards like the Arduino Uno to run this sensor at full performance and without using any dedicated sensor libraries.
For more information on the new tinyLiDAR jump over to the Indiegogo website for details by following the link below.
Source: Indiegogo
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