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I have a few questions about VL53L1CB.

sLee.401
Associate

1. I would like to know the release date of VL53L1CB and VL53L1CX.

2. If you check the datasheet of the VL53L1CB, it is listed as the VL53L1 model, but the CB is missing. I want to know the reason. What does CB mean?

Is there a datasheet dedicated to the VL53L1CB?

3. The datasheet shows the measurement distance as "400 cm+ detection with full field of view (FoV)". But other documents say 8M, which is more accurate information? I would like to know why there is no information about 8M in the datasheet.

4. Between the VL53L1CB and VL53L1CX, which one has better measurement distance?

I look forward to your reply. thank you

1 REPLY 1
John E KVAM
ST Employee

The L1CB and the L1CX were released on the same day.

But I do have to admit that our naming convention is pretty screwed up on this part.

The CX version was to be released to the mass market. Code was easy, chip worked well.

The CB version was initially released only to the cell phone market.

We incorrectly assumed that most people did not need or want the more complex Histograms of the CB.

And as we already know all the cellphone companies, we kind of got sloppy and named the Histogram part the VL53L1 (with no qualifier).

But then we had more than a few customers who really wanted that VL53L1.

But we could not release an VL53L1 to go with the VL53L1CX that was already in the market.

The only solution was to rename the VL53L1 to be the VL53L1CB.

Technically the 'C' is a placeholder, and the B was pretty randomly chosen.

So the VL53L1 (no qualifier) is the VL53L1CB.

When released the VL53L1 (CB or not) had a distance of 4M. But remember, this is a

histogram part. And the histograms are processed in the host MCU using the code we provide.

After it's release we had a customer who wanted to focus a projector up to a distance

of 8M. And projector screens are pretty reflective.

It was a matter of changing the histogram processing - not the chip itself.

That 8M can realistically only be achieved while looking at a highly reflective large stable target.

(But the code that does 8M is in the VL53L1CB driver.)

Histogram processing is kind of amazing. So the VL53L1CB is the better measurement

choice. But you give up the very simple driver, and you give up the autonomous

processing. And it’s a bit more expensive.


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