Has anyone got any experience with rangefinder systems for microcontrollers ?
What I’d need is an accurate (+/-1%) and non visible way of measuring distance at a fixed point, that updates up to 2-3 times per second or so with a range of 0.3-20m. Sonar is cheap but goes up to 5m only and isn’t terribly precise. I thought of gutting a second hand golf rangefinder which use IR LIDAR but min range is 5m and that’s not close enough. Is there anyway of hacking it or changing the lens to reduce the range ?
Also needs to be fairly lightweight (200g or less without battery) and low power
Yes I saw that its amazing but its $299 
The golf rangefinders are around 60 and more accurate than i need. Only prob is minimum range, but i’m wondering if this a gain issue or just the optics that need setting for closer focus. The max range is massive (500m) so i can afford to lose most of that.
Laser Tape Measure is what you want to search for. They go as low as £30. Not sure if you’d get 3 measurements/second out of them though. The one we have at work devours batteries too…
I’ll have a look ! I only need to activate it in short bursts and I can have the arduino do the heavy lifting for updates.
Don’t those have a visible laser though or do they have 2 (one for pointing and IR for measuring) ?
I think two, because the red dot disappears while you take a measurement
I suspect it’s a timing problem, so a GPS clock might help
Old fashioned twin image system with image edge detection software
Reading toms link I think that jitter and timing are the reason why short range is difficult.
It would be a intresting problem 
I would be ok with 1m minimum
Dual image would need too much big gear and heavy processing no ?
We use these at work, they are really good:
https://www.pulsedlight3d.com/
There was a supply issue for a while so be aware the price is high atm.
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That looks perfect. 1/3 the price of the other arduino solution. If that’s supposed to be ‘high’ this looks like a winner once the price comes down
P.s. requires some external capacitory bits.
How so ? The spec page is a broken link . What does it output ?
It’s SPI but there are a couple of passives needed for some reason or other.
Check the Sparkfun website they might have a mirror.
Thanks Tom. This really is exactly what I need. I suppose the caps help average out the signal ?
Looks like pusle light was bought by Garmin and they are making a v3 at some point. Frustrating I’ll have to wait but hopefully it will be worth it.