Proton BASIC Community

@joesaliba it turned out that I had applied 5v to the wrong pin on the breakout board I had, I misinterpreted Vin vs VCC and suspect I blew the chip as it doesn't respond at all.  Purchased the VL5310x breakout just to play with TOF stuff and they're very accurate little units.  I tweaked Craig's code and simplified it just to give 3 sets of results from the string, then averaged out the 3 results to give a general number within a range.  For my application accuracy isn't required it's simply an indication of how far a surface is from the device which will put in some preventative action to prevent operators continuing to drive at speed into something which isn't moving. 
Overall very impressed! 

Chris they are neat little devices the only thing to keep an eye on is that they are sensitive to Sunlight / UV Light.

Chris,

Thanks for the info.

Joe

@Craig yes I discovered this
 With sunlight, past about 550mm it gets a little hit and miss with a few odd readings where its getting confused. Wondering if there are any better filtering lens to put over receiver.
I observed the ambient variable and noticed a correlation with the long distance accuracy vs ambient light.
Going to also try a ultrasonic module I got from RS for distance measuring, might be more robust for my application.

Hi Chris
You can look at the TF Range From http://en.benewake.com/
I have used the TF Mini and it Works Very Well Outdoors (12M), They use Uart and are pretty simple to use.

Depends on your application, There Are some others you can look at as well.

https://www.terabee.com/sensors-modules/lidar-tof-range-finders/
ams OSRAM TMF8805 – 1D Time-of-Flight sensor with 940nm integrated IR VCSEL
Broadcom AFBR-S50MV85I time-of-flight sensor module
CH-201 MEMS-based ultrasonic Time-of-Flight (ToF) sensor

Regards
Craig

Thanks @Craig I'll take a look. I did come up with a crazy idea using an actual uart spinning lidar head. Seen lots of the cheap "robotic vaccume" type. Was thinking if I could set up a boundary so to speak I can have a alert on a small lcd screen or led compass indicating areas of danger relative to a compass 360 orientation.

Here is another distance sensor to add to the list.  Ultrasonic swiss army knife https://www.maxbotix.com/ultrasonic_sensors/mb1030.htm I've just ordered one to try, they're available in different beam angles and distances.  On the face of it seems pretty neat and tidy as a single transducer ranger.
Will let you know how I get on with it.