Another article from the "what I found in my trash" series. The principle of operation is as simple as soap – almost like an ultrasonic sensor, only an infrared beam of 940 nm is used. Bottom side – LDOs and level converters: And last week, picking out dust from the corners of the workplace, I dug out this sensor too. He discovered sensors that were just starting to be produced – VL53L1X: small, economical, accuracy and measured distance (up to 4m) were sufficient for him and asked me to deal with them.
Well, I decided to tell you about it – for some reason, these sensors are not as popular as ultrasonic ones. — Photon reflector, comrade general!

What is this?! By the time it came from China, the idea had already been forgotten, and the sensor itself had collapsed somewhere. Which was done immediately. A few years ago, a friend of mine needed to quickly focus his camera. — I myself see that it is a photonic reflector. Over the past time, it has interested arduinists, libraries have appeared, and now it takes only a few minutes to put this sensor into operation. In the sensor housing there is a laser, an array of avalanche LEDs (ultra-fast SPAD https://jiji.ng/audio-and-music-equipment/pioneer-cdj_350 Single Photon Avalanche Diodes) and a small controller that manages all these things – and where without it today? The usual method is to twist the lens and evaluate the image contrast programmatically, it didn’t roll in terms of speed. Over the years, I don’t remember what idea came to my mind, but I ordered this sensor.

VL53L0X – measure the distance with a photon reflector

A few years later, I found on Ali a cheaper version of such a sensor, with a shorter distance. The sensors were fresh, there was little information about them, and there were no ready-made libraries yet. The top side of the board is the sensor itself: I ask why not painted?!