Rangefinders: Lidar Lite V2, Lightware, and others, need recommendations

Posted by Cala on February 11, 2016 at 3:04pm

After near tree months I recived happy the Lidar Lite V2, but now I have a concern because, apparently is discontinued?

something wrong with this thing?

It's a risk to put on my quad? :(

Answer I recived: Lidar was purchased from Garmin, so It's going to re-appear under Garmin name.

Now is in the market Lightware, developing altimeters for Ardu pilot and helping rangefinders users in this forum ( http://www.lightware.co.za/shop/en/4-drone-altimeters. )

I changed the title because this post discussion content look's usefull for other rangefinders too.

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Replies

    • Doug Walmsley > David Mathias February 17, 2016 at 8:57am

      @ David,

       

      According to Craig Elder's DEV call, Terrain following is being worked up on version Copter 3.4.

    • Justin Ward > Doug Walmsley April 9, 2016 at 6:11am

      I had a look at the arducopter github page, and there is a pull request in there (from Randy) for terrain following using software (the terrain tile method).

      There is also a pull request from someone else that provides I2C support for lightware laser rangefinders.

      I do not see code that can use the rangefinders (sonarrange) in Auto missions.

      We run 3.3.3 on 2 quads. One has a lidar lite 2 and the other a lightware SF10c. They both work in loiter and alt hold, but not in auto missions. Thus terrain following using cm accurate lasers is not available in arducopter yet. This feature would be very useful for surveyors and agricultural surveys.

    • Justin Ward > Justin Ward June 5, 2016 at 7:18am

      Correction. Terrain following using rangefinders is in 3.4rc1

      @Laser Developer - any news on if you will be supporting first and last returns?

      First returns being tree top following, and last returns being terrain following. 

    • LightWare - Laser Developer > Justin Ward June 5, 2016 at 10:49pm

      We've run some preliminary tests but don't have a firm date for incorporating the firmware yet. The addition of a different signal analysis algorithm means that we will need to do run lots of verification tests and these take a long time. Because of this, the project will only be scheduled officially when there is a suitable gap in the development program. So much to do ...

    • David Mathias > Doug Walmsley February 20, 2016 at 8:27pm

      @Doug, thanks.  I hope they have time to include it for 3.4.

    • Doug Walmsley > Doug Walmsley February 17, 2016 at 10:23am

      My bad.  I used the wrong URL. Try this one.

    • LightWare - Laser Developer > David Mathias February 15, 2016 at 9:31pm

      I've asked our dev to look into Guided mode for you.

    • David Mathias > LightWare - Laser Developer February 20, 2016 at 4:00pm

      Thanks @LaserDev.  My students and I write software to control our MAVs.  We almost never fly manually so Guided mode support is important.  Ultimately, what we want to do is incorporate two Lidar units -- one for altitude and the other facing forward for obstacle detection.

    • LightWare - Laser Developer > David Mathias February 20, 2016 at 10:20pm

      That's an interesting configuration. How do you decide which way to go if an obstacle is detected in the forward direction?

    • David Mathias > LightWare - Laser Developer February 21, 2016 at 8:48am

      That's a good question.  We're still working on that part. :-)

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