Adafruit
VCNL4010 Proximity/Light sensor
The VCNL4010 sensor is a nice way to add a small-distance proximity sensor to your microcontroller project. For longer distances (in the range of cm, you ...
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The VCNL4010 sensor is a nice way to add a small-distance proximity sensor to your microcontroller project. For longer distances (in the range of cm, you can use a SHARP IR distance sensor, but those are only good if the object is over 10 cm away. The VCNL4010 is designed for much shorter distances, no more than 200mm (about 7.5") and under our experimentation we found it worked best at distances of about 10-150mm. It would be good for say detecting when a hand moved nearby, or before a robot smacks into a wall. The sensor also has an ambient light sensor built in.
This sensor is easy to use with any microcontroller that has i2c capability. It is 5 volt compliant so you can use it with 3.3V or 5V logic with no risk of damage. There is an onboard 3.3V ultra low dropout regulator so you can power it with 3.3 to 5.0V. However, if you can give it 5.0V that is ideal since the VIN voltage powers the IR LED and the higher the voltage you can give it, the more powerful it is.
New! As of Sept 23, 2015 we are now shipping this breakout with the updated VCNL4010 - the library has changed and the chip is slightly different in that it now supports interrupts. We also made the board a little more compact. However, the overall proximity functionality is identical.
Jargon buster
Plain-language definitions for the technical terms used above.
- Ambient light sensor
- A sensor that measures the general brightness of light falling on it, similar to how a device can adjust screen brightness automatically. It matters when you want a project to react to room lighting, daylight, shadows, or covered/uncovered conditions.
- breakout
- A breakout board carries a small or fine-pitched component and brings its connections out to standard, breadboard- and header-friendly pins. Describing a part as a breakout means it can be wired into a project without soldering directly to the component's tiny contacts.
- I2C
- I2C is a two-wire communication bus used by many sensors and small modules. It matters because several I2C devices can share the same two wires, but each device needs a compatible address and your controller must support I2C.
- LED
- A light-emitting diode (LED) is a small electronic component that emits light when current flows through it in the correct direction. Because it only conducts one way, its polarity matters, and a through-hole LED must be soldered the correct way around to light up.
- low dropout regulator
- A voltage regulator (LDO) that maintains a steady output even when the input voltage is only slightly above the output. When a board includes an LDO, it can often run from a wider or lower supply range, such as 3-5 V, without needing a separate external regulator.
- microcontroller
- A microcontroller is a small computer on a single chip that runs a stored program and controls connected inputs and outputs such as buttons, sensors, displays and communication interfaces. In a device built around one, it is the part that executes the code and coordinates the device's behaviour.
- Proximity sensor
- A sensor that detects the presence of a nearby object without physical contact, using methods such as infrared, ultrasonic, capacitive, inductive or time-of-flight. Useful ranges vary widely between types, from a few millimetres to several metres, so check a given sensor's specified range to see whether it suits close-up touch-free triggers or longer-distance detection.
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