VL6180 Hookup Guide

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Contributors: CaseyTheRobot
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Introduction

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The VL6180 is a Time of Flight (TOF) distance sensor with an I2C ("Wire") interface. This Hookup Guide will cover two boards. The VL6180 Breakout and the VL6180 Sensor. These boards are very similar in function though the VL6180 Sensor has additional hardware for level shifting and voltage regulation.

Many distance sensors rely on reflected light intensity or reflected angles to determine range. This sensor uses a precise clock to measure the time it takes light to bounce back from a surface. This is a great benefit over other methods because it can be much more accurate and more immune to noise. This sensor is commonly found in cellphones as the sensor that detects when the caller is holding their phone to their ear.

Covered in this Tutorial

We will show you how to connect this sensor to an Arduino microcontroller and use the included software library to get measurements out of the sensor. (If you're using a different type of microcomputer these instructions and source code may still help.)

Suggested Reading

This part is easy to use. But before you start, we recommend the following background knowledge: