Problem Reading Serial Data from Neato LIDAR Unit

Other Hardware Sensors
1

Hello everyone, I have just bought one of the Piccolo LIDAR units from a Neato robotic vacuum with the intention of interfacing with it through my Arduino Uno. So far I have been able to get the sensor to spout off its usual start-up message with no problems (see below):

:slight_smile:
Piccolo Laser Distance Scanner
Copyright (c) 2009-2011 Neato Robotics, Inc.
All Rights Reserved

Loader V2.5.15295
CPU F2802x/c001
Serial WTD02213AA-0221593
LastCal [5371726C]
Runtime V2.6.15295

The issue I am having is that I cannot seem to decipher the actual data coming from the sensor. As soon as the sensor spins up it begins outputting data but the data does not seem to conform to any of the protocols I have seen online at http://xv11hacking.wikispaces.com/LIDAR+Sensor or http://random-workshop.blogspot.com/2010/11/useable-data-from-xv-11-lidar_25.html. The sensor indicates that it has the v2.6 firmware and the sites I have found indicate that this version of the firmware should be outputting 0xFA as a sync byte before every packet; however, this does not appear to be the case. I'm not entirely sure what I am doing wrong to get data that is so far off of what I expected. I will attach a raw dump of what the sensor is outputting as well as the sketch so you can see for yourselves. Any help would be greatly appreciated as I have never programmed with serial interfaces much so this is somewhat new to me.

LIDARReliableInterface.ino (519 Bytes)

LIDARDump.txt (12.9 KB)

2

If the lidar is not spinning within a specifc RPM range it will not transmit data. Here's some Arduino based code that can help you get started. GitHub - getSurreal/XV_Lidar_Controller: Arduino code for controlling the Neato XV Lidar

-getsurreal

3

Hi

i have a cuestion?

You can show me your conexion whit arduino.

i´m try to do the same project but i can´t get the serial conexion whit arduino i dont now what is the problem.

Tanks