TFmini Infrared Time of Flight Distance Sensor

SKU: ADA3978 Brand: Adafruit

Retired Product

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This product has been retired. It is no longer available, but this page has been kept for reference.

Adafruit have got many distance sensors, and the TFmini Distance Sensor is a nice addition. This sensor bounces light off objects and returns the distance in centimeters. It's a nice compact plastic package, with UART serial output.

Please note that the company calls this a "LiDAR" but it is not a true LIDAR. Instead, its a time-of-flight (ToF) infrared sensor like the VL53L0X. That said, it's easy to use, and since it spits out the data directly over serial, you don't need a complex driver as long as you have a serial port available. If you're using with a computer rather than a microcontroller, you can plug this into a USB console cable and run Adafruit's Python library to read sensor distance data.

These kinds of Time of Flight sensors are really common in robotics or UAV projects, but they can also be used for automation, interactive art, and motion sensing. Can detect 30cm to 12 meters (ideal), with ±4cm from 0.3 to 6m and ±6m up to 12m.

Comes with a cable you can splice and solder to. Power with 5V on the red (power) and black (ground) wires. Then read data from the green TX wire, the logic level is 3.3V.

You can use this sensor with Arduino, or CircuitPython/Python (for microcontrollers or Raspberry Pi)

We carry a large variety of distance sensors here if this fellow isn't what you're looking for.

Technical Details

Dimensions (excluding hookup wire): 42 x 15 x 16mm (LxWxH)
Weight: 6g
Hookup wire length: approx 100mm
Input Voltage: 5V
Average Power: ≤120mW
LED Peak Current: 800mA
UART TTL Voltage: 3.3V
Baud Rate: 115200 8N1
Minimum Detected Object Size at 2m: 20mm
Operating Temperature: -10℃ ~ 60℃
Operating Wavelength: 850nm
Signal Acceptance Angle: 2.3°
TFMini's Github repository
Datasheet
Manual

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Retired

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