I'm not sure what experience you've had with them, but I've also done the same and interfaced with both types of parts in the past. My personal experience is th

I'm not sure what experience you've had with them, but I've also done the same and interfaced with both types of parts in the past. My personal experience is that you seem to get what you pay for — while ultrasonic sensors are incredibly cheap they're also often fairly inaccurate, much more than the VL53L0X. Both parts have their use cases but it seems to me that the original creator of Daytripper probably valued that accuracy over the increased BOM cost by a few dollars.