XV Lidar Controller

Copyright 2014-2018 James LeRoy getSurreal.com

v1.4.0

Control the Neato XV Series and Botvac Series Lidars with an Arduino compatible board.

Used as an interface board to connect directly to the Neato XV/Botvac Lidar and control the rotation speed through Pulse Width Modulation (PWM).

• http://www.getsurreal.com/products/xv-lidar-controller
• https://github.com/getSurreal/XV_Lidar_Controller

Based on work by:

• Nicolas "Xevel" Saugnier https://github.com/bombilee/NXV11/
• Cheng-Lung Lee https://github.com/bombilee/NXV11/tree/master/ArduinoMegaAdapter

Code contributors:

• Doug Hilton mailto: six.speed (at) yahoo (dot) com

Description

The XV Lidar Controller receives the serial data from the XV/Botvac Lidar looking for the RPM data embedded in the stream and uses a PID controller to regulate the speed between 200 - 300 RPMs. The data received from the Lidar is relayed to the USB connection for some upstream host device (PC, BeagleBone, Raspberry Pi) to process the data.

Requirements

Hardware

• Neato XV/Botvac Lidar - Available on eBay
• XV Lidar Controller Board by getSurreal http://www.getsurreal.com/xv-lidar-controller
  • v1.2 with Teensy 2.0 (XV Lidar only)
  • v1.3 with Arduino Pro Micro Clone (XV Lidar only)
  • v2.0 with Teensy LC (XV and Botvac Lidar)
  • Firmware https://github.com/getSurreal/XV_Lidar_Controller

Software to build from source

• Arduino IDE v1.8.1 - v1.8.5
• For Teensy board - Teensyduino v1.35 - v1.41 http://www.pjrc.com/teensy/teensyduino.html

Usage

Connect to the USB port at 115200 baud. When sending commands use the newline character to signify the end of a command.

Commands

Control commands

• ShowConfig - Show the running configuration
• SaveConfig - Save the running configuration to EEPROM
• ResetConfig - Restore the original configuration
• SetAngle - Show distance data for a multiple angles (Ex: SetAngle 0, 15-30, 45-50, 10)
• SetRPM - Set the desired rotation speed (min: 180, max: 349)
• MotorOff - Stop spinning the lidar
• MotorOn - Enable spinning of the lidar

Data commands

• ShowRaw - Enable the output of the raw lidar data (default)
• HideRaw - Stop outputting the raw data from the lidar
• ShowDist - Show angles with distance data
• HideDist - Hide the distance data
• ShowErrors - Show all error types (CRC, Signal Strength, and Invalid
• HideErrors - Hide angles with errors
• ShowRPM - Show the rotation speed
• HideRPM - Hide the rotation speed
• ShowInterval - Show time interval per revolution in ms, at angle=0
• HideInterval - Hide time interval
• ShowAll - Show the distance, errors, RPMs and interval data
• HideAll - Hide the distance, errors, RPMs and interval data

PID commands

• SetKp - Set the proportional gain
• SetKi - Set the integral gain
• SetKd - Set the derivative gain
• SetSampleTime - Set the frequency the PID is calculated (ms)

Output comma-separated format:

• A,{Angle},{Distance in mm},{Signal Strength}
• C,CRC
• R,{RPMs},{PWM value}
• T,{Time interval in milliseconds between each angle 0}

Errors:

• CRC = Data id not pass CRC check
• I = LIDAR reports Invalid data for this angle
• S = LIDAR reports Poor signal strength for this angle