Introduction
This guide will help you read distance data in millimeters from your PiicoDev® Distance Sensor and a Raspberry Pi Pico
To follow along, it's best to have:
- A Raspberry Pi Pico with pins soldered (pointing down)
- A PiicoDev Distance Sensor VL53L1X
- A PiicoDev Expansion Board for Raspberry Pi Pico
- A PiicoDev Cable
- (Optional) A PiicoDev platform helps secure everything together.
Connect the PiicoDev sensor to your Pico
Plug your Pico into the Expansion Board, connect your distance sensor to the Expansion Board via the PiicoDev cable, and finally connect your Pico to your computer with a USB lead.
If you're unfamiliar with connecting PiicoDev modules, read the PiicoDev Connection Guide before proceeding.
Download MicroPython modules
We will need three files to easily read data from the Distance Sensor:
- Download the PiicoDev Unified Library: PiicoDev_Unified.py (right-click, "save link as").
- Download the device module: PiicoDev_VL53L1X.py (right-click, "save link as")
- Download the example script: main.py (right-click, "save link as")
It will be best to keep these files wherever you like to keep your coding projects eg. Documents > PiicoDev
Example Code
We'll be working in Thonny - if you're unfamiliar working with Thonny see our guide for Thonny and Raspberry Pi Pico.
Open Thonny, connect to your Pico and upload the three files (that we just downloaded) to your Pico. (Hint: View the files menu with View > Files)
Restart your Pico (Keyboard shortcut, Ctrl+D) and you should be seeing your Pico printing the distance it reads from the distance sensor.
Above: Distance data streams up the Shell, while the Plot shows historic distance data. I move my hand back and forth in front of the sensor to create the wave pattern in the plot.
If you have any questions or uncertainty, start the discussion below. We're full-time makers and here to help!
