RPLIDAR 360° Laser Scanner

Works great in indoor spaces, although the advertised 5Hz refresh rate is more like 3Hz. Outdoors it works well if it's cloudy, otherwise, sunlight generates a ton of random noise making it virtually unusable.

(Posted on 9/6/16)

The RP Lidar is great to develop the technology, however, it is not applicable for production yet, the durability is not that good.

(Posted on 3/18/16)

Item Arrived as Described.. Wonderful Unit

(Posted on 2/24/16)

Let me be clear: It is a fantastic product for the price. Works well and is easy to integrated. However, it is also clear that the technical specs as a bit exaggerated. I can get about 270 to 280 sample for rotation. I have tried to slow down the rotation with PWM for a better resolution but it does not work well. The Lidar is very sensitive to the control voltage.

(Posted on 1/30/16)

Hello,

First some general information.
I am using this sensor on a mobile robot which is operating in an outdoor environment. I used to use sharp infra red triangulation sensors, but they are useless in daylight, because of the bright sunlight. These lidars have much better performance and can detect a brick wall at several meters even in direct sunlight. They are having problems with very dark (black) surfaces and metallic painted surfaces like a car though. But this was to be expected. If this is your only sensor on your robot beware of glass doors! ! ! You will not detect them ! ! So use a sonar as a proximity sensor. If you want to do SLAM use a Arduino Due, Beagle Bone or Raspberry Pi or DE0_Nano FPGA board. They are fast enough to receive the data from the sensor and do some real processing.

Summary: a good sensor with good price quality performance. Easy to integrate in your robotics project because of the TTL-leves RS232 interface and USB interface board.

Regards Henny

(Posted on 12/30/15)

hi

The scanner can detect an object opaque black or black wall?

(Posted on 5/2/15)

I purchased one of these, and it worked very well until last week, somehow the infrared emitter just stop working. I've been very careful handling this, I kept it in a safe place, it never dropped to the floor or something that could damage it. There is no support or warranty that could help you when this happens, so consider the risk of buy it.

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We will gladly exchange the product, please rest assured that we stand by the products that we sell. One of our technicians will be in touch with you.

(Posted on 4/8/15)

The pricing is really good and this is exactly what we were looking for except that the hardware seems like a work around to the more expensive Laser Scanners. Would have rated it higher if it were more hardy.

(Posted on 12/29/14)

The price is unbeatable, the software works great, and the hardware is what was expected. It does make some noise while rotating, but nothing to worry about. Would buy again.

(Posted on 11/24/14)

It's easy to judge the hardware as good or bad but the software, both drivers and example client code, are where products like this usually evade QA and reviewers. I was really happy to see that the drivers and SDK all just worked and the reference implementations were clear enough that I was able to get my own C application up and running in less than 3 hours.

Performance is good, at first I was made nervous by the highly mechanical aspect of this: whirring, spinning things with belts tend to be fragile, but it's been running for days now without any problems.

(Posted on 10/2/14)

It's a very nice product, robust and reliable, also very precise. I'm really happy with it. The only reason for not giving a 5-star rating is the sound of friction that it makes during operation. It doesn't seem to do any harm, but I'm afraid that sooner or later some abrasion might appear. But that doesn't bother me too much, because for this price I can replace it twice before hitting the price range of the next option :) So, it's totally recommended.

(Posted on 9/9/14)

With the SDK and documentation at http://rplidar.robopeak.com/download.html it is easy to build a software interface for your project. I had a quick and dirty C# interface running in a couple of hours. The sensor will be integrated in an existing autonomous robot project, http://www.silver-bullet-technology.com/george.htm, to upgrade both obstacle avoidance and localization.

(Posted on 8/31/14)

Finally, an affordable hobby level LIDAR.
Provided with sample code, and not too difficult to write your own, this sensor component will be the basis for my SLAM implementation.
My robot description is at http://www.spiked3.com/?p=575 along with a link to video of this LIDAR in use.

(Posted on 8/10/14)