Bitcraze Flow Breakout Board

The Flow breakout board is used for motion tracking and can easily be connected to any robotics project or other design.

The motion of a surface, usually the ground, is measured and is reported as delta X and delta Y by the optical flow sensor. The absolute distance (Z) is measured by the Time of Flight ranging sensor. It comes with an Arduino library to easily read the movement data and has a large voltage range for IO and power supply.

The Flow breakout features the VL53L0x ToF sensor and the PMW3901 optical flow sensor.

Features

• Fast, accurate distance ranging
• Measures absolute range up to 2m
• Measures movement in X/Y using optical sensor
• Power supply and IO 3V - 5V compatible
• Arduino library for easy usage
• Minimum range for motion tracking is 80mm
• VL53L0 ranging sensor
• The VL53L0 ranging sensor is facing front on the board. It is accessible on the I2C pins SCL and SDA.
• PMW3901 optical flow sensor

The PMW3901 optical flow sensor is facing front on the board. Is is accessible on the SPI pins CS, MISO, MOSI, CLK. The pins MOTION and /RESET are also connected to the PMW3901. The reset pin can be left floating if not needed.

The optical flow sensor will output motion count. Assuming the board is moving above a flat surface the X/Y orientation is as follow:

• Arduino drivers

You can install Arduino libraries using the Arduino library manager.
The VL53L0x has been succesfully tested with the following drivers:

• https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_VL53L0X
• https://github.com/pololu/vl53l0x-arduino

The PMW3901 arduino driver is https://github.com/bitcraze/Bitcraze_PMW3901.

Specifications

• VL53L0x ToF sensor to measure distance up to 2 meters
• PMW3901MB Optical Motion Tracking Chip
• Input and signal voltage from 3V to 5V

Compatibility

• Compatible with 3 to 5V system
• Optical flow requires an SPI port
• ToF ranger requires an I2C port

Technical Details

• Dimensions 20mm x 26mm x 4mm
• Weight G.W 3.5g N.W 2.7g
• Battery Exclude

Part List

• 1 x Flow breakout
• 1 x 10 pins male header

Documents

• PMW3901 Arduino library
• Flow breakout schematic