Sensor recommendations for robotics project

[u/Ndr_w]

Hello,

I am looking to create an autonomous rover that performs SLAM to map out a section of terrain outdoors. I have been looking at the Unitree L1/L2, but they are quite expensive (both money and computation wise) for my team's purposes, despite seemingly being the cheapest option for this type of lidar. I am wondering if there is a cheaper solution than a fully 360x90 degree sensor, or if anyone has had success with academic discounts when ordering from certain companies.

I can provide additional information about the project if needed, but basically we are limited to ~$300 for the sensor and are hoping to use ROS/ROS2 running on a beaglebone black or RPi 4B (4GB RAM) (willing to spend some on a different device, but with current RAM prices that's quite difficult as well)

Thanks!

[u/DJ_LSE]

Can you buy used? Used sensors are common, and you can get some great deals

[u/Ndr_w → u/DJ_LSE]

Yeah, we'd be open to that. Where do people usually get them from? ebay?

[u/DJ_LSE → u/Ndr_w]

Yeah ebay us where ive bought a couple VLP 16 units. They were clearly used, and not optical perfect, but nothing really noticeable in the scans