The VL53L5 (and the VL53L7 and VL53L8) use histograms to get the range. Each bin of the histogram represents all the photons that were collect during each clock cycle after the laser turns on. All 3 of these devices have a clock such that each bin is 3.75cm distance. So of you have significant photon counts in the 10th bin, you will have a target 10 x 3.75cm away. (To figure out where in the bit the target lies more accurately one uses the ratio between the first bin and the next bin.
If you really want a treat, buy the VL53L8CH. With this chip we enable the ability of the sensor to output the bin data (as well as the distance and signal strength) and you can see exactly what the sensor sees. The VL53L8CH is not that much more than the VL53L5 in cost either. It's a good deal.
The 2mm between the transmit and receive is too small to even care about. For any reasonable distance just consider them in the same place.
Exactly how we do this is a company secret, but several universities give PhD's in this kind of stuff.
I'd suggest buying the P-nucleo-53L8A1 and downloading the VL53L8CH Graphical User Interface.
You can log the output data and evaluate it against your target scene. Maybe you can come up with a better algo.
Generally people put this histogram data into AI engines and see if the AI can 'see' anything in the data.
- john
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