YRNGFND1 Yocto Range Finder

Description

The Swiss-made Yocto RangeFinder is similar in size as many of our USB sensors, such as the Yocto Altimeter: 20mm wide, 58mm long and just a few millimeters high. One could hardly guess that it encompass a tiny laser rangefinder for performing Time-of-Flight (ToF) distance measurements.

The ST Microelectronics VL53L0X rangefinder sensor embedded on the Yocto RangeFinder includes a 940nm infra-red VCSEL emitter, invisible to human eye, and an array of single-photon detectors. Given its size and price, this sensor is indeed impressive. Although it looks like a simple proximity sensor, it is actually capable of detecting objects up to 1 or 2 meters, depending on the conditions, and to provide a close estimate of the nearest object distance.

This sensor is however not magic, there are a few limitations:

• 50cm away from the sensor, the sensing zone is 20cm wide
• the max precision is 3%, inside and for clear targets
• outside and for dark objects, you should rather count on an accuracy of 6%
• the max range, inside and for clear targets, is 2m
• outside and for dark objects, the max range is typically 70cm

The sensor part can be split and moved away using a 4-wire cable, to make it easier to integrate it in a machine for instance. Be careful if you intend to protect the sensor using a cover window: the measure could be affected by the window, and that might require an extra calibration step.

SKU: YRNGFND1

Specifications for YRNGFND1 Yocto Range Finder

Manufacturer Product Number – YRNGFND1
Product name – Yocto-RangeFinder
Width – 20mm
Length – 58mm
Weight – 5g
USB connector – Micro-B
Max accuracy – 3%
Max distance – 2m (~6%)
Field of view (FOV) – 25°
Wavelength – 940nm
Chipset – VL53L0X
Supported Operating Systems – Windows, Linux (Intel + ARM), Mac OS X, Android
Drivers – no driver needed
API / SDK / Libraries (USB+TCP) – C++, Objective-C, C#, VB .NET, Delphi, Python, Java/Android
API / SDK / Libraries (TCP only) – Javascript, Node.js, PHP, Java
RoHS – yes
Made in Switzerland