WEEK 9

Lab: I2C Communication with a Time-of-Flight Distance Sensor

For this lab, I used a Pololu VL53L1X Time-of-Flight Distance Sensor I borrowed from the shop. I first tried the lab with the Adafruit model in the shop, but I kept having the issue of the sensor not recognizing anything, so I switched to the Pololu one.

It didn’t work at first, until I realized that I had the SCL & SDA wires switched. Once I wired the circuit correctly, it worked pretty well:


I found this lab really helpful because I am trying to decide which kind of touchless sensor(s) I will incorporate in my final project. I think these sensors could work well for what I need them to do.

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Next I tried to connect the distance sensor values to p5, with the help of Yonatan: 



It was cool to see this work, and I think I’ll incorporate this into my final project. But instead of my previous idea of 4 separate blocks each with their own sensor, I think it makes more sense to have 2 sensors, one for left/right movement and one for up/down. The only thing I will need to figure out is how to change the address of one of the distance sensors so I can send data from both, separate from each other, to p5. I found some resources on how to do this, so I don’t think it will be too hard. 

Next up, I’ll connect another distance sensor to my board and see if I can get the square to move up/down/left/right, and then will get to work on the game itself. There are a few things I want to change from my initial game that I made, and will have to alter the code to get it to read the Arduino IDE data too.