Description
The Adafruit VL53L1X Time of Flight Distance Sensor (also known as VL53L1CX) is a Time of Flight distance sensor that has a massive 4 meter range and LIDAR-like precision. The sensor contains a very tiny invisible laser source and a matching sensor. The VL53L1X can detect the “time of flight”, or how long the light has taken to bounce back to the sensor.
Since it uses a very narrow light source, it is good for determining the distance of only the surface directly in front of it. Unlike sonars that bounce ultrasonic waves, the ‘cone’ of sensing is very narrow. Unlike IR distance sensors that try to measure the amount of light bounced, the VL53L1X is much more precise and doesn’t have linearity problems or ‘double imaging’ where you can’t tell if an object is very far or very close.
This is the ‘next generation’ of the VL53L0X ToF sensor and can handle about ~30 to 4000mm of range distance, with up to 50Hz update rate. The sensor itself requires 2.8V power and logic, but the breakout board takes care of this with a regulator and level shifting. You can use it with any 3-5V power or logic microcontroller without worry – so a perfect match for any Raspberry Pi, Arduino, and just about every other common microcontroller or SBC.
Best of all, this board is SparkFun qwiic and Adafruit STEMMA QT compatible – so you can use this without even having to solder.