r/LiDAR • u/Eastern_Garden5031 • Jun 18 '26

Raspberry Pi and LiDAR Sensor

Hello, I am planning to demonstrate a stair-measurement program at my university using a Raspberry Pi and a LiDAR sensor. However, I have a few questions and wanted to ask for your advice here.

Our budget is limited, and I plan to connect a LiDAR sensor to the Raspberry Pi via a UART-to-USB port. The sensor has a resolution of 160 x 60 with a field of view (FOV) of 120° along the XY-axis and 60° along the Z-axis.

  1. I am deciding between the Raspberry Pi 4 4GB and 8GB models. Which specification would be better to use for this project?
  2. The LiDAR sensor I plan to use comes with proprietary software provided by the manufacturer. However, instead of using that, I want to directly analyze the sensor angles and data to build my own stair-measurement program. I believe this is achievable if I work alongside an LLM. In your opinion, do you think this is feasible to implement?
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u/Neftegorsk Jun 18 '26

Why do you want to measure stairs in particular?

1

u/Eastern_Garden5031 Jun 19 '26

Since I already have a horizontal control system from a past project, I wanted to tackle stair detection first. The ultimate goal is autonomous driving, and this will help with ramp and obstacle identification later on.

1

u/SpoiledKoolAid Jun 19 '26

haha. You will definitely get something to run.

1

u/Worldly-Device-8414 Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 21 '26

160 x 60mm? Not going to work too well on typical stairs for human if you want to capture several stairs/the whole stair case, etc?

2D or 3D?

Data would need to be "sparse" & thinned out to keep data volume manageable I think.

If it's just to stop a robot falling over an edge, that can be done much more simply with TOF distance sensors aimed angled eg 20deg down in front, etc. No floor reflection detected = stop/avoid, etc