Poll -- How Much Do You Know about Time of Flight Sensors?

Hi all!

I'm preparing to propose an activity on element14 for a program I manage regarding Time of Flight sensors. It would be helpful for me to know everyone's knowledge level. I'd appreciate your input in this poll. Thanks.

Poll: How Much Do You Know about Time of Flight Sensors?

Top Comments

Jan Cumps over 5 years ago in reply to neuromodulator +5

neuromodulator wrote: I couldn't find it... Was it a roadtest blog or a common blog? Both. Here's a link: TI Ultrasonic Sensing RoadTest - Review
neuromodulator over 5 years ago +4

I hope this is a hint of an upcoming roadtest
Jan Cumps over 5 years ago +4

I roatested one here on element14, end 2015.

Parents

robogary over 5 years ago

Ive seen them used in projects, but havent done a project with them, but would be willing to try.
Maybe due to my ignorance, I understand the time of flight sensors are I2C based, all having the same I2C address.
Using multiple time of flight sensors would also require an "address expander" to multiplex them.
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robogary over 5 years ago

Ive seen them used in projects, but havent done a project with them, but would be willing to try.
Maybe due to my ignorance, I understand the time of flight sensors are I2C based, all having the same I2C address.
Using multiple time of flight sensors would also require an "address expander" to multiplex them.
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beacon_dave over 5 years ago in reply to robogary

"...Using multiple time of flight sensors would also require an "address expander" to multiplex them..."

The Adafruit VL53L0X may be of interest as it appears to have a software programmable I2C address which can be set to any address below 0x7F (0x29 power on default)

You would need an initialisation routine to set a unique address to them on power up but would allow you to have multiple sensors on the one bus without the expander.
See 'Connecting Multiple Sensors' at:
https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-vl53l0x-micro-lidar-distance-sensor-breakout/arduino-code
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jomoenginer over 5 years ago in reply to robogary
I guess it depends on what you mean by "Time of Flight" sensor. If you are referring to devices that are labeled this, then most seem to be i2c based where others are not. Something like the Parallax Laser Ping just has a SIG line to control and read from the sensor.

The VL53L0X is a ST device and there is an App note AN4846 "Using multiple VL53L0X in a single design" for changing the address on the sensors:
https://www.st.com/en/imaging-and-photonics-solutions/vl53l0x.html#resource

There is an API where you can change the device address of the VL53L0X. This may be temporary and reset back to default after power reset as in the Adafruit example. I have not tried this.
```
VL53L0X_SetDeviceAddress()
```
The other option, if you have enough available GPIO pins, then you could use that to select individual devices or use an expander.
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