What is it?

A very tiny motor driver board with two laser-driven Time-of-Flight distance sensors. The motor driver is TI DRV8830, which enables motor speed and direction control. ToF sensors are STMicro's VL53L0CX, which measures high precision distance by Infra-Red planar laser through ToF from sensor to object. DRV8830 and VL52L0CX are connected through I2C bus to MCU ATmega328P-MMH. MCU is already Arduino bootloader written so motor driver and ToF sensors are programmable through Arduino IDE via on-board USB-serial interface (CP2102).

Why did you make it?

I always love to make something by an exotic sensor. This time I found the Time-of-Flight distance sensor, whose size is much much smaller than a conventional supersonic distance sensor, it is small enough to fit inside a tiny 9-mm gauge train. I've got some experience to make tiny Arduino by, for example, SDuino and this time I make everything fit on a tiny board. Just an MCU and distance sensor is not so interesting, soI also put I2C motor driver (DRV8830). In addition, USB-serial interface is implemented by CP2102.

What makes it special?

• All in one. This tiny board is already Arduino and we can program by just connecting USB cable. (No need for any additional interface. )

• Tiny but has two distance sensors and one DC motor controller on-board!

• ToF sensors are incredibly tiny but give us high precision distance measurement.

• DC motor driver (DRV8830) enables motor-speed control by variable voltage and rotation direction.

• Sample program (simple distance measurement by two sensors,(results can be seen by serial monitor) and motor driving sample) is uploaded to github

• Relevant hackaday project is already presented. please refer before ordering

The following movie is an example to put on N-gauge motor-car. This example implemented by constant speed but more intelligent speed control will be possible. This sample code is available at github