Product introduction:

The VL6180 is a time-of-flight ranging sensor. The sensor contains a very small laser source and a matching sensor. The VL6180X can detect the "time of flight" or the time required for the laser to recover the sensor to calculate the distance.

Unlike most distance sensors that rely on reflected light intensity or angle of reflection to determine the distance, the VL6180 uses an accurate clock to measure the time it takes for light to bounce off the surface, since it uses a very narrow source, which is different from ultrasonic sonar. Unlike traditional infrared distance sensors, you can't tell if an object is close because there is no linear problem or "dual imaging." Therefore, the VL6180X is more accurate.

The VL6180 module is recommended to handle distances from 5mm to 100mm. Due to its small size, the sensor module is easy to use in any robot or interactive project. You can use it with any 3-5V power supply or logic microcontroller.

Product Features

1. Integrated intelligent optical module, which can be used for proximity sensing, ranging and other functions;

2. Fast and accurate distance measurement. Measure the absolute range from 0 to 100 mm or more. Based on object-independent self-illuminating beam reflection measurements, measurements over 100 mm can be used in some extremely desirable target reflectances and environments, but are not guaranteed;

3. I2C interface for device control and data, two programmable GPIOs.

Power Pins:

• Vin - this is the power pin. Since the chip uses 2.8 VDC, we have included a voltage regulator on board that will take 3-5VDC and safely convert it down. To power the board, give it the same power as the logic level of your microcontroller - e.g. for a 5V micro like Arduino, use 5V
• 2v8 - this is the 2.8V output from the voltage regulator, you can grab up to 100mA from this if you like
• GND - common ground for power and logic

I2C Logic pins:

• SCL - I2C clock pin, connect to your microcontrollers I2C clock line.
• SDA - I2C data pin, connect to your microcontrollers I2C data line.

Control Pins:

• GPIO - this is a pin that is used by the sensor to indicate that data is ready. It's useful for when doing continuous sensing. Note there is no level shifting on this pin, you may not be able to read the 2.8V-logic-level voltage on a 5V microcontroller (we could on an arduino UNO but no promises). Our library doesn't make use of this pin but for advanced users, it's there!
• SHDN - the shutdown pin for the sensor. By default it's pulled high. There's a level-shifting diode so you can use 3-5V logic on this pin. When the pin is pulled low, the sensor goes into shutdown mode.