10 ms·
Raspberry Pi Lidar Scanner
- Liftyee 1y agoIt's impressive that the cost of usable LIDAR tech is well within the reach of personal projects now. The sensors used on the first self-driving cars (from companies like SICK, etc.) likely perform much better but the price point of multiple k$ is not really viable for experimentation at home. Not to make everything political, but I wonder how the US tariffs will affect electronics-adjacent hobbies. Anecdotally, the flashlight community on Reddit has been panicking a little about this.
- _blk 1y agoShort term there's some suffering but while hobbyists are definitely more price sensitive, they are also the most flexible ones. In production you don't just need one piece, you need a steady supply and any change of components affects the whole product. How China/US interact will determine the longer term future of that economic relationship but many companies are already adjusting because he future is currently uncertain. With the free trade agreement with the EU and more producers moving to the US I think that it's been a good disruption even if I'm now also scrambling to find alternative PCB manufacturers.
- InsideOutSanta 1y ago>With the free trade agreement with the EU There is no such agreement. >more producers moving to the US How many will follow through with these announcements? During Trump's first term, announcing huge projects in the US and then not following through was a common tactic for companies dealing with Trump. Foxconn, for example, announced a new $10 billion factory in Wisconsin. They made some initial investments and stopped when people stopped paying attention. Instead of the promised 13.000, they now employ about 1.000 people there. And what about all the companies that will have gone out of business by then? This mainly affects small companies, which are exactly the companies you need for a healthy economy. In some cases, they have shipments already paid for that they can't accept because they don't have the liquid assets to pay the unexpected tariffs, so these companies are now at risk of going out of business completely unnecessarily. It never makes sense to use tariffs for economic reasons. It just does not work. Tariffs can make sense for strategic reasons if you're willing to take an economic hit to lower dependence on other countries for critical industries or technologies. However, the idea that taxes are ever "a good disruption" for the economy does not bear out.
- otherme123 1y ago>It never makes sense to use tariffs for economic reasons. It just does not work. This week two USA companies from which I bought some products from Europe sent me an email explaininig how they have to rise their prices due to tariffs, as they need to import from China for now. Guess who will be faster: these companies finding an alternative supplier in the US that match China quality-price, or I finding an alternative supplier from China? They just admited that they are buying from China anyways.
- pogue 1y agoI'm sure most electronic hobby projects are going to be financially out of reach for many people for awhile at least. Many people who run businesses that are running small homebrew projects are struggling, too [1]. But it can be extremely hard to tell what might happen with a POTUS who seems to change his mind on what tariffs should be implemented on a whim with zero thought process put into it, no prior notice when they're going to be implemented or removed and then implemented again times 500% or whatever. I know the Hong Kong post also recently blocked outbound packages entirely sent to the US [2], so I don't know how that's impacting shipments of tech like this & etc byt would be curious to know. [1] Arduboy creator says his tiny Game Boy won’t survive Trump’s tariffs https://www.theverge.com/news/645555/arduboy-victim-trump-tariffs-us-china-kevin-bates https://www.theverge.com/news/645555/arduboy-victim-trump-ta... [2] Hong Kong suspends package postal service to the US after Trump’s tariff hikes https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/15/business/hong-kong-suspends-postal-service-to-us-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/15/business/hong-kong-suspends-p...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- minimalist 1y ago> Not to make everything political... [proceeds to make a political statement] For what it's worth, this type of Lidar scanner was possible to make well over a decade ago with ROS1, a Phidgets IMU, a webcam, and a lidar pulled out of a Neato vacuum (the cheapest option at the time). This would be around the difficulty of a course project for an undergraduate robotics class and could be done with less than 200 USD of salvaged parts (not including the computer). Hugin was also around over a decade ago. It's still a nice little project!
- varispeed 1y agoThis seems to be using classic formula -> get trivial, ready made component, design 3D printed enclosure and hook it up to Raspberry Pi. Instant Hacker News homepage.
- frainfreeze 1y agoSo, where's your hardware project? Have you ever made one? I think you're underestimating the amount of time and effort that went into the linked project.
- CamperBob2 1y agoNot to make everything political... [proceeds to make a political statement] Being all polite and non-political and shit is what brought us to this pass. Never lose an opportunity to make the people who voted for the current state of affairs feel isolated, rejected, guilty, and generally bad. Being nice to them doesn't work.
- frumplestlatz 1y agoYou’re not making me feel isolated, rejected, guilty, or generally bad. You’re feeding into the confirmation bias I already have about how the opposition thinks, which only serves to affirm the choice I made.
- almostgotcaught 1y ago
- moffkalast 1y agoIt's true, a Hokuyo or a Sick that sold for several thousands a decade ago is laughably bad compared to something under $100 from Shenzhen these days. When there's a need there's a way, I guess. I hope they decide to develop some disruptive stereo/structured light/tof cameras eventually too, those are still mostly overpriced and kinda crap overall.
- LM358 1y agoNever mind hobbyists - I work in electronics R&D and my two favorite suppliers are US based even though I am not. Anxious to see how this plays out and that's not even considering our production departments.
- godelski 1y agoThis is really cool One thing I'd suggest, for any hardware product, is that when doing your bill of materials to provide links and show estimated costs. Sure, these will change but having a rough idea of the costs is really helpful, especially when perusing on from things like HN. It can be a big difference for someone to decide if they want to try it on their own or not. It is the ballpark figures that matter, not the specifics. You did all that research, write it down. If for no one but yourself! Providing links is highly helpful because names can be funky and helps people (including your future self) know if this is the same thing or not. It's always noisy, but these things reduce noise. Importantly, they take no time while you're doing the project (you literally bought the parts, so you have the link and the price). It saves yourself a lot of hassle, not just for others. Document because no one remembers anything after a few days or weeks. It takes 10 seconds to write it down and 30 minutes to do the thing all over again, so be lazy and document. I think this is one of the biggest lessons I learned when I started as an engineer. You save yourself so much time. You just got to fight that dumb part in your head that is trying to convince you that it doesn't save time. (Same with documenting code[0]) Here. I did a quick "15 minute" look. May not be accurate Lidar: One of: LD06: $80 https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803352905216.html LD19: $70 https://www.amazon.com/DTOF-D300-Distance-Obstacle-Education/dp/B0B1V8D36H STL27L: $160 https://www.dfrobot.com/product-2726.html Camera and Lens: $60 https://www.amazon.com/Arducam-Raspberry-Camera-Distortion-Compatible/dp/B0B1MN721K Raspberry Pi 4: $50 NEMA17 42-23 stepper: $10 https://www.amazon.com/SIMAX3D-Nema17-Stepper-Motor/dp/B0CQLFNSMJ That gives us $200-$280 before counting the power supply and buck converter. [0] When I wrote the code only me and god understood what was going on. But as time marched on, now only god knows.
- mannyv 1y agoYou could probably harvest these from robot vacuums on ebay/goodwill.
- mannyv 1y agoThese = lidar sensors
- politelemon 1y agoThe sketchfab examples are fantastic, to be able to move around in a 3D space, like it's some kind of scifi simulation. The mouse controls are confusing the heck out of me. It shows a 'grab' icon but nothing about it grabs as the movement direction is the opposite, feels completely unnatural.
- amelius 1y agoSomewhat related. I'm looking for a cheap way to measure distances to approx 10 microns accuracy, over distances on the order of 300mm. Any ideas?
- djoldman 1y agoFor what purpose? https://xyproblem.info/ https://xyproblem.info/
- aeonik 1y agoNot OP but I'm in the same market, 3d printing and desktop CNC for me.
- RossBencina 1y agoAnswering their question would be more helpful here, even if it doesn't solve their problem.
- hamburglar 1y agoAssuming the XY problem based on nothing is pointless and counterproductive and only serves to make you feel smart.
- dheera 1y agoOCT.
- bobmcnamara 1y agoThere are cheap OCT systems?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- aeonik 1y agoI have some design ideas for a diy system, how much money/time are you willing to spend for experimentation? What counts as cheap to you? I'm thinking about automating something a long these lines: https://youtu.be/hnHjrz_inQU?si=dNzXVBVFsr7e8m_6 https://youtu.be/hnHjrz_inQU?si=dNzXVBVFsr7e8m_6 Off the shelf lasers and camera sensors can be hacked around with DIY for some pretty unexpected precision.
- dheera 1y agoIt's not obvious what the heck this is without reading into it. A full 4pi steradian scanner? a 360 degree 1 channel LIDAR? A fisheye camera plus some single channel LIDAR plus monocular depth estimation networks to cover everything not in the plane of the lidar? It would be great to clarify what it is in the first sentence.
- geor9e 1y agoits a fisheye camera plus single-channel LiDAR
- HALtheWise 1y agoI believe it's a 360deg planar lidar mounted on a vertical plane, with a motor to rotate it around and slowly cover a full 4pi sphere. There's also a fisheye camera integrated in. This is a pretty common setup for scanning stationary spaces (usually tripod mounted)
- donatj 1y agoOh hey! This is exactly what I was looking for just a couple weeks ago! I've had parts to prototype something roughly equivalent to this sitting in my cart on Amazon for a couple weeks now, but I've been very uncertain on my choice of actual lidar scanner. I'll have to look into this as a starting point I get back from Easter vacation
- badmonster 1y agoHi! Thanks for sharing this amazing work. I’m curious about the scalability and performance of PiLiDAR when deployed on large-scale outdoor datasets. Have you benchmarked it on datasets like SemanticKITTI or nuScenes? If so, could you share any insights on runtime, memory usage, and how well it generalizes beyond the indoor scenes used in your paper?
- nisa 1y agoI think you (or me, please correct me if that's the case) misunderstood something here - this is a diy lidar scanner for data acquisition - these datasets are mostly created using rgba cameras and the point clouds are later created with some post processing step. So it's not a model for processing data but rather a hardware hack for having a real lidar - as in real depth data. You can throw anything you like on it.
- Animats 1y agoThe actual scanners: [1] Max range 12 meters. That's when it seems to start to get expensive. The light source, filters, and sensors all have to get better. Good enough for most small robots. Maybe good enough for the minor sensors on self-driving cars, the ones that cover the vehicle perimeter so kids and dogs are reliably sensed. The big long-range LIDAR up top is still hard. [1] https://www.ldrobot.com/ https://www.ldrobot.com/
- gmueckl 1y agoI'd like to know where this price jump really comes from. Google doesn't help me. My first guess is that laser safety becomes an active control process at this point - laser scanner mirror needs to keep moving to not be able to deposit a damaging amount of energy onto a human retina. So you need a safety critical control system to constantly monitor mirror speed and and position and shut down the laser when it becomes too slow. How wrong am I?
- Animats 1y agoMore output power, larger optics, more sensitive detectors, more rejection of unwanted light, more pixels, larger rotating machinery, active stabilization... And the big units are low volume. Here's a top of car LIDAR you can buy for about US$27,000.[1] 128 pixels high sensor, spinning. This is roughly comparable to Waymo's sensor. [1] https://www.hesaitech.com/product/ot128/ https://www.hesaitech.com/product/ot128/
- wkat4242 1y agoWow. Lidars have become so good. This is amazing. I had no idea
- beachy 1y agoThere's a lot of stuff that was better in the "good old days". But to be alive when it's possible for gifted individuals to create technology like this is just incredible.
- Havoc 1y agoHow safe are these sorts of sensors for eyes?
- frainfreeze 1y agoI'm wondering the same. There are many reports of lidars damaging camera sensors.
- heljara 1y agoI've been toying with photogrammetry a little bit lately, specifically for scanning indoor rooms and spaces. So far I'm finding metashape the most suitable for it, but some of the precision isn't great (but I'm still improving my technique). I mostly want to convert the interior of one real building into a digital model for preservation and analysis. I've briefly considered LIDAR, but put it in the too hard/expensive bucket. This project seems to challenge that assumption. What does the software post-processing look like for this? Can I get a point cloud that I can then merge with other data (like DSLR photographs for texturing)? I see in their second image[1] some of the wall is not scanned as it was blocked by a hanging lamp, and possibly the LIDAR could not see over the top of the couch either. Can I merge two (or more) point clouds to see around objects and corners? Will software be able to self-align common walls/points to identify its in the same physical room, or will that require some jiggery-pokery? Is there a LIDAR equivalent of coded targets or ARTags[0]? Would this scale to multiple rooms? Is this even worth considering, or will it be more hassle than its worth compared to well-done photogrammetry? (Apologies for the peak-of-mount-stupid questions, I don't know what I don't know) 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARTag https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARTag 1: https://github.com/PiLiDAR/PiLiDAR/raw/main/images/interior.jpeg https://github.com/PiLiDAR/PiLiDAR/raw/main/images/interior....
- rsp1984 1y agoShameless plug, but if you own an iPhone pro or iPad Pro (which have Lidar integrated), you should give Dot3D a try. It does everything you describe and we made it very easy to use.
- heljara 1y agoThank you for the reply. Unfortunately, I don't own an iPhone - maybe I can borrow one, though. Any limitations of the app or practical advice you might want to share?
- mannyv 1y agoHow do you make it so your LIDAR doesn't interfere with someone else's LIDAR?
- frainfreeze 1y agoMulti path errors are rare, and if it happens there are mitigation techniques.
- IshKebab 1y agoI think it's unlikely because both lidars have to be pointing at exactly the same place at exactly the same time and using the same frequency. Not impossible but probably not big deal.
- Aspos 1y agoGY-521 in particular and MPU6050 in general make quite poor IMUs. Why do you use them? And what for in this particular case? What do they do in this set up?
- HALtheWise 1y agoDo you have other sensors in the same price range that you'd recommend instead for most uses? How much accuracy improvement would you expect?
- Aspos 1y agoYaw drift is my problem, so I tried a bunch of IMUs. Ones built around BNO055 seem to be alright and they are not that much more expensive. I ended up using Adafruit's.
- itissid 1y agoFor home improvement projects, This could be quite useful for generating point cloud map of places hard to get to. Like I have drywall installations I would love to get behind and check how things look, this would be great for that.
- chneu 1y agoThis is a very legit and good idea. A simple stud-finder like tool to map out behind walls would be incredibly useful for folks who run cabling or whatnot.
- joeevans1000 1y agoThis is amazing! Thank you! It may be in the project as I just scanned through i (but will read through it properly soon), but do you have any of the data for accuracy? Say, over 10M (Or less, if this lidar doesn't work at that distance). I'm familiar with the FARO scanners which have a different type of mechanism. Their accuracy is good enough for building things. I've discovered there's several markets for scanners… among those are people who need accuracy and people who are creating content for media like games. Thank you so much for sharing this project. It's truly unbelievable.
- joeevans1000 1y agoI noticed that you can't use it commercially without contributing. How much do you have to contribute for that and where would someone do it?
- joeevans1000 1y agoHello?