We started off with the Arduino nano mostly because they are very popular and cheap. I found that for the handful of features in the first version it is plenty capable and reliable.
However I’ve recently started experimenting with some faster chips and the Teensy platform.
The code is pretty straightforward so I’m excited to see what features and improvements you guys come up with.
Bluetooth is especially interesting because it opens up the OpenPPG platform to the outside world, especially phone apps. We’re just getting started but its always good to be thinking about the future
Experiments are complete! VL6180X was connected to a Teensy 3.6 controller for test runs (could have connected to any micro with I2C communications).
Conclusions: VL6180X Time-of-Flight (TOF) is nice little sensor for proximity detection in an OPEN environment. TOF sensor not good for this application. Any surface close to the infrared emitter causes backscatter and the sensor readings become unreliable. So infrared beam is not as collimated as I was expecting (I know!.. too good to be true). I would not use this approach to determine throttle position!
