The VL53L1X is the latest Time Of Flight (ToF) sensor to be released. It uses a VCSEL (vertical cavity surface emitting laser) to emit a class 1 IR laser and time the reflection to the target. (You can’t see the laser but cell phones can) What does all this mean? You can measure the distance to an object up to 4 meters away with millimeter resolution! That’s pretty incredible.
We’ve written an Arduino library for the VL53L1X that allows you to read the distance, signal rate, and range status. We’re far from done: The VL53L1X is a highly complex sensor with a multitude of options and configurations. Because ST has chosen not to release a complete datasheet we are forced to reverse engineer the interface from their example code and I2C data stream captures. If you’re into puzzles we could use your help to make the library better!
We’ve found the precision of the sensor to be 1mm but the accuracy is around +/-5mm. The minimum read distance of this sensor is 4cm.
This board is one of our many Qwiic compatible boards! Simply plug and go. No soldering, no figuring out which is SDA or SCL, and no voltage regulation or translation required!
