Testing LaserPING

greyghostx

Anyone here have experience using the LaserPING connected to a Raspberry Pi? I searched the forum but didn't find much.

I popped the device in a breadboard and wired my UART pins to the sig line and provided 3.3v and gnd to the appropriate places. I want to use serial comms for this so I applied a dab of solder to short the DBG and SCK pads.

I haven't done serial comms before but I have a couple of test scripts that at least show I can read and write on loopback. I apply power to the LaserPING and set up my reading loop, but I get nothing but blanks.

Here's the code of my loop:

import time, serial

ser = serial.Serial('/dev/ttyAMA0',9600, timeout=1)

try:

        while True:
                data = ser.readline()
                print (data)
                time.sleep(1)
except:
        print ("I take exception to that!")

finally:
        ser.close()

I can confirm 3.3v is available to the VIN with an LED. My reading loop does pick up if I write to the serial from another script, so I know it's hooked up.

Any ideas of what questions I need to ask here?

Thanks!

iseries

The problem with your code is that it is waiting for a newline character and not a return. (b'\n' - b'\r')

import time, serial

ser = serial.Serial("/dev/ttyS0", 9600, timeout=1)
s = ""

try:
	while True:
		data = ser.read()
		if data == b'\r':
			print("distance", s)
			s = ""
		else:
			x = data.decode('utf-8')
			s = s + x
except:
	print("I take exception to that!")

finally:
	ser.close()

I tried this code and it seems to work. I had to use ttyS0 for my Pi 3B

Mike