Hi
I am building a housing for my Lidar Lite 3 and am wondering if the unit neads a specific angular clearance at the lens. Does it only sense immediately in front of it, or does it for example require a certain ‘cone’ of clearance in order to receive signals?
If this is not clear I will try creating a diagram to illustrate.
Thanks!
Hi,
Since it uses a laser to detect measure distances, for short enough distances it can be said to detect “immediately in front of it”.
But, as you may know, lasers diverge over distance and the LIDAR-Lite v3 is no exception. As you can see in the specifications, it mentions the beam divergence is 4 m rads x 2 m rads.
This is not really an issue at short ranges, but as you get further (and this device has a maximum range of ~ 40 m), it does start to matter.
So, technically, the beam is cone-ish in reality, but a very small one that increases in size slowly. At ~40 m, it is roughly 173 mm x 93 mm in size.
Sine your enclosure is very close to the device, this will most likely not matter at all as the divergence at that distance will be negligible.
We still recommend that you try it out and see if your measurement gets affected at all by your enclosure compared to without it in the same testing conditions.
Sincerely,
