I am wanting to create a somewhat compact and cheap board that can detect parallelism to a surface it is pointing at by using three distance sensors spaced apart to tell you when all three were equal. Working range 10 to 50cm, sensor resolution 1mm or less, spacing of sensors ~5cm. I know the close spacing does not help but that is the constraint. Type of surface can vary but will always be opaque. Would IR sensors work for this application? Thanks!
That sounds like an interesting challenge! I assume you mean IR reflective sensors? They would have to be well matched and the surface reflectivity uniform. You say 1mm resolution, but what accuracy?
The sensors may not work at all, if they interfere with each other. Since manufacturers assume that distance sensors will be used in isolation, you will have to experiment.
That was my concern. Did not know how much interference there would be. Absolute accuracy I can be a little flexible on if the three can be calibrated in a jig. But yes will need much experimentation, thanks.
Correct, reflective IR. Not sure what would be better without being overly expensive. Sorry I answered about accuracy in other reply but without calibration not sure. Need to do a tolerance analysis on the system and decide what accuracy I need the parallelism to be.
You can get around that by only having one sensor on at a time. As long as all measurements complete before the item moves, that should work.
I was thinking of the VL53L0X but it doesn't have the accuracy you're looking for (assuming your accuracy is in the same range as the resolution you need).
Yes that's a great point. Thank you. I may need to rethink requirements based on what sensors I can find.
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