@James: That sounds very amazing (and useful)! We recommend that you make a detailed post about this on our forum and/or on our project-oriented website, Let’s Make Robots. We are certain the RobotShop community would be interested in such development. We are eager to see your project on GitHub!
@Kemal: This sensor is meant for range detection, not object detection, so it may not perform very well for your application. You may have more success with PIR (Proximity Infra-Red) sensors, such as these. If you need more detailed help, we recommend that you post in our forum instead.
Thanks Sébastien, I will work on that, I tried to post a couple times, but kept getting server errors.
More later …
Hi Sebastien, can anyone use LIDAR-Lite for UAV mapping? any example?
Thank you
@James Dougherty: We apologize for any inconvenience with those issues and recommend that you open a support ticket regarding your website access issues. Do so here for Let’s Make Robots and here for our forum.
@kalix: As mentioned previously, the LIDAR-Lite is meant for detecting the range in a set direction. While it is possible to perform some rudimentary mapping using the LIDAR-Lite, this is certainly not a trivial problem and will require much effort to accomplish. You can certainly find some examples online with a simple search.
Hello, found this top very interesting, thanks a lot, btw, how much it costs, and how i can get it ? waiting for ur answer, greets 
im having some trouble because i cant stabilize for example it goes 34,35,36,38,33 that measures +5cm beyond the wall… and i dont know why the measurements are not accurate enough … ive already average it stilll the values are not good.
@Cyril Jay: We recommend that you verify your wiring and ensure you have the following:
- A stable 5 V DC power source that provides enough current for the LIDAR-Lite
- A large capacitor between the VCC & GND pins of the LIDAR-Lite
If this is already the case, then we recommend you open a support ticket with us if you think it is defective. If it is more an integration issue, you can post about it on our forum here.
im controlling 3 of them in one microcontroller… maybe i should go have an external 5V DC have common ground with arduino and a 10V 1000uF cap connected to 5V and GND ?sorry im a bit newbie here.
@Cyril Jay: If you are using three of them, then you may very well run into power issues. We recommend that you obtain a good quality 5 V DC regulated power supply. For capacitors, you should have one of 680 uF per sensor (as close as possible to the VCC & GND of the sensor), as recommended by the manufacturer. If you do not have large enough capacitors, you can combine multiple capacitors. You can read more about combining them here.
thanks a lot !! its now working but… one of my sensors has still have +5 readings… i dont know what to do. i did not put any +5 in my code…
@Cyril Jay: If all three of your sensors are in the same setup, please try each of them one by one. If the possibly faulty one still has a +5 value difference, we recommend that you open a support ticket with us and we can look into further troubleshooting your issue.
i’m not having accurate results when measuring centimeters… im reading below 20cm but it gives me 28,25,27… is it reliable in measuring centimeters?? (actually ive float the output values from the sensor).
@Cyril Jay: Here is a citation of a previous answer: The manufacturer does mention that while the minimum range is effectively zero, the distance measured at ranges under 30 cm may vary in quality due to the alignment of the components inside the case. At short distances (< 30 cm), the optics (since they are made for very long range) create a parallax effect that may create invalid results.
Hi all: Fantastic, will the unit measure powder in a silo (cement powder) so we can build a level indicator?
Thanks
how ca i use a lidar to make some mapping?? i would use it for an aerial drone, is there anything i can do to not purchase it for a huge amount of money??? loking forward to your answers
any suggestions that i can do to reduce the parallax effect? 
@Adie: This unit will return the distance of any surface that is reflective to IR. You can read more about it in the documentation here.