One thing I'd suggest, for any hardware product, is that when doing your bill of materials to provide links and show estimated costs. Sure, these will change but having a rough idea of the costs is really helpful, especially when perusing on from things like HN. It can be a big difference for someone to decide if they want to try it on their own or not. It is the ballpark figures that matter, not the specifics.
You did all that research, write it down. If for no one but yourself! Providing links is highly helpful because names can be funky and helps people (including your future self) know if this is the same thing or not. It's always noisy, but these things reduce noise. Importantly, they take no time while you're doing the project (you literally bought the parts, so you have the link and the price). It saves yourself a lot of hassle, not just for others. Document because no one remembers anything after a few days or weeks. It takes 10 seconds to write it down and 30 minutes to do the thing all over again, so be lazy and document. I think this is one of the biggest lessons I learned when I started as an engineer. You save yourself so much time. You just got to fight that dumb part in your head that is trying to convince you that it doesn't save time. (Same with documenting code[0])
Here. I did a quick "15 minute" look. May not be accurate
Lidar:
One of:
LD06: $80 https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803352905216.html
LD19: $70 https://www.amazon.com/DTOF-D300-Distance-Obstacle-Education/dp/B0B1V8D36H
STL27L: $160 https://www.dfrobot.com/product-2726.html
Camera and Lens: $60 https://www.amazon.com/Arducam-Raspberry-Camera-Distortion-Compatible/dp/B0B1MN721K
Raspberry Pi 4: $50
NEMA17 42-23 stepper: $10 https://www.amazon.com/SIMAX3D-Nema17-Stepper-Motor/dp/B0CQLFNSMJ
[0] When I wrote the code only me and god understood what was going on. But as time marched on, now only god knows.
After all car sales don't drive the stock market. Public opinion does.
I guess it's simply a big numbers thing. If you sell lots of cars, shaving a couple of hundred dollars of each car adds up.
edit: seriously, a $4,000 sensor and an extra, say, $3,000 for an upgraded computer module so your car can drive itself is just too much too afford?
So it’s too much to afford, or at least not singularly justifiable, unless more than 1 out of every 2000 cars kills someone in a way that would be prevented by LIDAR.
0: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S109830152...
At the time they used just a single roof-mounted lidar unit. I remember him saying the one they were using produced point cloud data on the order of Tbps, and they needed custom hardware to process it. So I guess the point cloud data isn't necessarily harder to process than video, but if the sensor's angular resolution and sample rate are high enough, it's just the volume of data that makes it challenging.
The mouse controls are confusing the heck out of me. It shows a 'grab' icon but nothing about it grabs as the movement direction is the opposite, feels completely unnatural.
It would be great to clarify what it is in the first sentence.
I'll have to look into this as a starting point I get back from Easter vacation
So it's not a model for processing data but rather a hardware hack for having a real lidar - as in real depth data.
You can throw anything you like on it.
Max range 12 meters. That's when it seems to start to get expensive. The light source, filters, and sensors all have to get better.
Good enough for most small robots. Maybe good enough for the minor sensors on self-driving cars, the ones that cover the vehicle perimeter so kids and dogs are reliably sensed. The big long-range LIDAR up top is still hard.
Liftyee•3h ago
Not to make everything political, but I wonder how the US tariffs will affect electronics-adjacent hobbies. Anecdotally, the flashlight community on Reddit has been panicking a little about this.
_blk•3h ago
How China/US interact will determine the longer term future of that economic relationship but many companies are already adjusting because he future is currently uncertain. With the free trade agreement with the EU and more producers moving to the US I think that it's been a good disruption even if I'm now also scrambling to find alternative PCB manufacturers.
InsideOutSanta•2h ago
There is no such agreement.
>more producers moving to the US
How many will follow through with these announcements? During Trump's first term, announcing huge projects in the US and then not following through was a common tactic for companies dealing with Trump. Foxconn, for example, announced a new $10 billion factory in Wisconsin. They made some initial investments and stopped when people stopped paying attention. Instead of the promised 13.000, they now employ about 1.000 people there.
And what about all the companies that will have gone out of business by then? This mainly affects small companies, which are exactly the companies you need for a healthy economy. In some cases, they have shipments already paid for that they can't accept because they don't have the liquid assets to pay the unexpected tariffs, so these companies are now at risk of going out of business completely unnecessarily.
It never makes sense to use tariffs for economic reasons. It just does not work. Tariffs can make sense for strategic reasons if you're willing to take an economic hit to lower dependence on other countries for critical industries or technologies. However, the idea that taxes are ever "a good disruption" for the economy does not bear out.
otherme123•49m ago
This week two USA companies from which I bought some products from Europe sent me an email explaininig how they have to rise their prices due to tariffs, as they need to import from China for now.
Guess who will be faster: these companies finding an alternative supplier in the US that match China quality-price, or I finding an alternative supplier from China? They just admited that they are buying from China anyways.
pogue•2h ago
I know the Hong Kong post also recently blocked outbound packages entirely sent to the US [2], so I don't know how that's impacting shipments of tech like this & etc byt would be curious to know.
[1] Arduboy creator says his tiny Game Boy won’t survive Trump’s tariffs https://www.theverge.com/news/645555/arduboy-victim-trump-ta...
[2] Hong Kong suspends package postal service to the US after Trump’s tariff hikes https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/15/business/hong-kong-suspends-p...
minimalist•2h ago
For what it's worth, this type of Lidar scanner was possible to make well over a decade ago with ROS1, a Phidgets IMU, a webcam, and a lidar pulled out of a Neato vacuum (the cheapest option at the time). This would be around the difficulty of a course project for an undergraduate robotics class and could be done with less than 200 USD of salvaged parts (not including the computer). Hugin was also around over a decade ago.
It's still a nice little project!
varispeed•2h ago
CamperBob2•2h ago
Being all polite and non-political and shit is what brought us to this pass.
Never lose an opportunity to make the people who voted for the current state of affairs feel isolated, rejected, guilty, and generally bad. Being nice to them doesn't work.
frumplestlatz•2h ago
You’re feeding into the confirmation bias I already have about how the opposition thinks, which only serves to affirm the choice I made.
almostgotcaught•2h ago
frumplestlatz•2h ago
almostgotcaught•2h ago
frumplestlatz•2h ago
InsideOutSanta•2h ago
It's wild that you acknowledge your cognitive bias and then blame others for it instead of working on it. If I wrote something like that, I hope I would have the wherewithal to notice that something is seriously wrong with my thinking.
frumplestlatz•1h ago
I’m illustrating how the original behavior feeds confirmation bias instead of establishing a basis for constructive dialog.
minimalist•2h ago
I logged in to make a comment regarding something within my area of expertise: the technology present in the parent link and how this technology has been accessible to hobbyists for over 10 years.
InsideOutSanta•2h ago
If it's political to wonder how tariffs impact the cost of the project we're discussing, then everything is political, and it's pointless to complain about politics being "injected into everything."
fc417fc802•16m ago
moffkalast•1h ago
I hope they decide to develop some disruptive stereo/structured light/tof cameras eventually too, those are still mostly overpriced and kinda crap overall.