LoRa Capsule lidar

#1

Hi All,

My first post on here.

I am currently building a project where I will use 60 VL53L1X sensors and need a neat solution to house them, I came across the Capsule and wondered how transparent the caps are at the sensor side? The units will be outside and in a semi harsh environment 30°C, tropical weather.
I have my test setup with esp8266 D1 mini which work very well but my issue is using the VL53L1X outside, I am also looking at making the switch to LoRa due to a very congested WIFI network.

My ideal setup would be adding the Heltec LoRa gateway to my existing raspberry pi that is already running Mosquitto.

Thanks in advance

D

#2

Hi,

i dont think the capsule will work. the transparent cap is rounded and your vl53l1x will messure reflextions and scatter but not the right distanz.
And you have to be carefull in tropical weather, you can easily get condensated water on the sensor making a good measurment difficult.

i would use an ultrasonic or radar distance sensor. booth can be mounted easily in an enclosure to withstand the environment.

#3

I have thought about using ultrasonic, hopefully it should be straight forward to change my code. I can get waterproof Lidar type sensors but they are 3x the price of the vl53l1x.

I can use my sensor behind glass without issues and was looking at incorporating into a solar system.

#4

hello,

Below is the field of view of this sensor. [taken from st site]

image
image.jpg853×427 86.9 KB

please have a look at the video present in this link

https://www.st.com/en/imaging-and-photonics-solutions/vl53l1x.html. This video has some tips in creating a cover for the sensor

#5

I have seen the covers and they can be bought for about €6 each but it doesn’t make the board waterproof, the other issue I have is that the VL53 boards are much easier to use on a voltage side of things, I should be able to run my setup from a 3.7vdc Lipo battery and small solar module but the sonar and waterproof Lidar all require 5vdc.

I will probably resort to 3d printing a housing where I can add glass and seal it up

#6

yes, 3d printing is good option.Did you tried to play with FOV of the sensor vl53l1x ?

#7

No I haven’t do anything the FOV, my project is just to detect that something is in the location and report via MQTT.
I am not certain how I managed it because I am not a programmer and only know a little about coding but I know enough :grinning:, my output from Arduino either shows 0 more than 3 meters and 1 less than 3 meters and Node red converts to empty or full to a topic.