README.md

Basic Driver for the LD06 LiDAR Sensor

This repository provides a basic (currently read-only) driver for LDROBOT's LD06 LiDAR sensor.
This code was largely adopted from henjin0's repository.

Usage

listen_to_lidar.py provides a function to retrieve distance data from a serial port:

listen_to_lidar(port: string)

The argument port defines the serial port to listen to when reading from the LiDAR. It defaults to "/dev/tty.usbserial-0001".
listen_to_lidar() returns a tuple. The first value of the tuple is a dictionary "data" with the following key/value pairs:

First return value: data

Key	Description
distances	A dictionary with angles (integers; in degrees) as keys and distances (integers; in centimeters) as values.
last_packet_data	An instance of the LidarData class that contains the parsed data of the last received packet.

Properties of LidarData

Property Name	Description	Unit	Type
start_angle	Beginning angle of the range of the measurement data. This is also the angle of the first measurement.	degrees	float
end_angle	Ending angle of the range of the measurement data. This is also the angle of the last measurement.	degrees	float
speed	Speed of the motor.	degrees per second	int
time_stamp	Non-universal timestamp. Restarts after 30000.	milliseconds	int
confidence_i	List of the respective intensity of the returning light in a measurement.	-	list[int]
angle_i	List of the respective angle of a measurement.	degrees	list[int]
distance_i	List of the respective distance measured.	centimeters	list[float]

This data continuously gets updated after once calling listen_to_lidar(). To stop updating the data dictionary, use the stop() function, which is the second return value.

Example

import time
from listen_to_lidar import listen_to_lidar

lidar_data, stop = listen_to_lidar()
print(lidar_data['distances']) # prints the dictionary with all the accumulated distance data
time.sleep(1)
print(lidar_data['distances']) # prints the updated distance data

stop()