> **Source:** Core Electronics is an Australian maker-electronics retailer and manufacturer based in Newcastle, NSW, run by a team of makers and educators. We design and manufacture our own product lines (PiicoDev, CE originals) and are official retailers for iconic maker and industrial brands including Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Adafruit, SparkFun and DFRobot. Orders ship Australia-wide from our Newcastle warehouse. Prices are in AUD and include GST. Pricing, stock and dispatch on this page are generated from the store's live catalog. Full machine-readable index: https://core-electronics.com.au/llms.txt # Ultrasonic Distance Sensor with I2C Interface - RCWL-1601 **Type:** Product page · **SKU:** ADA4742 · **Brand:** [Adafruit](https://core-electronics.com.au/brands/adafruit-australia) **Page:** https://core-electronics.com.au/ultrasonic-distance-sensor-with-i2c-interface-rcwl-1601.html ([markdown](https://core-electronics.com.au/ultrasonic-distance-sensor-with-i2c-interface-rcwl-1601.html.md)) If you're like me, you've dreamed of being a dolphin - smoothly gliding through the water. Using your echo-location abilities to detect tasty fish... ## Pricing - **Price:** $7.45 (inc GST) — $6.77 AUD, exc GST - **Quantity discounts:** 10+ $6.57 (exc GST) · 50+ $6.44 (exc GST) ## Availability & dispatch - Out of stock — the product page offers email notification when it returns. ## How to buy - **Build a cart:** compose `https://core-electronics.com.au/cart/link?items=ADA4742:1` (comma-separated SKU:qty pairs) and share the link. Opening it shows a confirmation page with live pricing and stock before anything is added to the cart. - **Verify the cart first:** fetch `https://core-electronics.com.au/cart/link/ADA4742:1.md` for live line prices (inc & exc GST, quantity discounts applied), stock and dispatch estimates, and totals. Append `/to/{AU-postcode}` (or `/to/{country-code}:{postcode}`) before `.md` for delivery options and prices to that destination. Unknown, retired, or out-of-stock SKUs are flagged. (Query form `cart/link.md?items=...` also works but some robots parsers refuse query strings here.) - **Checkout** is completed on-site and includes a captcha at the payment step. Share the cart link; checkout takes it from there. - **Search the catalogue:** `https://core-electronics.com.au/search/{query}.md` (URL-encode the query; pages 2-3 at `search/{query}/{page}.md`; `search.md?q=` also works) - **Payment methods, purchase orders, policies and contact details:** https://core-electronics.com.au/llms.txt ## Description If you're like me, you've dreamed of being a dolphin - smoothly gliding through the water. Using your echo-location abilities to detect tasty fish treats. Until genetic modifications catches up with Adafruit's desires, we'll just have to make do with these handy **3V Ultrasonic Sonar Distance Sensor with I2C Interface** and a pair of flippers. These ubiquitous sensors are really common in robotics projects, but they can also be used for automation, interactive art and motion sensing. They work at about 2cm to 450cm away, but we think 10cm-250cm will get you the best results. These sensors are fast, fairly easy to use, and low cost. Unlike the more common HC-SR04 series, **this model can be powered by 3V *or* 5V** and the logic level will be the same. This makes this model great for use with just about any microcontroller or microcomputer. And this sensor has been set up to use **I2C** instead of trigger/pulse or UART. The I2C interface is very simple: the sensor listens on 7-bit address 0x57 (address cannot be changed). After writing a '1' to I2C to start a ranging session, wait a few milliseconds, then read the 3 byte response which is appended together for the distance in um (divide by 1000 to get mm). Pin order from Left to Right: Power, SCL, SDA, Ground - also written on the top of the PCB. Note that there's no built-in pullup resistors so they toss in two 10Ks for you to wire it up on a breadboard. Adafruit noticed that while this sensor does work with I2C it's not very 'friendly' - **it doesn't like to share the I2C bus, we think it gets confused by other commands and can lock up the bus.** So best used when you either don't have other I2C sensors or devices, or there's more than one I2C bus. Still, despite this restriction, we think it's probably still useful for some folks who are using a microcomputer or controller that can't do fast GPIO toggling for trigger/pulse or don't have a hardware UART available. - [If you need a version that also works with 3.3V power and logic, and has a UART output as well as temperature reading, check out the US-100!](https://core-electronics.com.au/us-100-ultrasonic-distance-sensor-3v-or-5v-logic.html) - [If you want the tried-and-true 5V-only HC-SR04 Adafruit have that in stock here.](https://core-electronics.com.au/hc-sr04-ultrasonic-sonar-distance-sensor-2-x-10k-resistors.html) You can use this sensor with [Arduino](https://www.instructables.com/id/Simple-Arduino-and-HC-SR04-Example/), CircuitPython (for microcontrollers or Raspberry Pi) [We carry a large variety of distance sensors here if this fellow isn't what you're looking for.](https://www.adafruit.com/search?q=distance+sensors) ## Technical Details Product Dimensions: 40.0mm x 18.0mm x 15.6mm / 1.6" x 0.7" x 0.6" Product Weight: 6.5g / 0.2oz ## Images - [Product image 1](https://core-electronics.com.au/media/catalog/product/A/D/ADA4742-1.jpg)