Here we have it – an affordable Open Source Laser RangeFinder – OSLRF-01 à partir de www.lightware.co.za. You can order it fully assembled and working or just PCB and optics (all other components have to find by Yourself).
So next step is connect it somehow to something. At that moment I found just one sucsess story shared online – Arduino Scanning LIDAR by Michael Ball http://arduino-pi.blogspot.com/2014/03/prototype-of-oslrf01-arduino-scanning.html. That was a very nice place to start connecting it to my Arduino UNO. Michael done it with Arduino Fio, which is 3.3V logic level board, not 5V like UNO’s. Don’t know real reasons why (maybe different voltage levels(different ADC’s), maybe different register settings for different boards), but straight out of the box I was receiving strange data. It was like added ~400cm to all my readings. OSLRF-01 was reacting to distance changes, but was very far from desired(real) values.
First I was little angry, then little depressed, but now I’m happy because it made me dive a little bit deeper into this sensor. And I will share some findings with You.
I will not repeat info about sensor working principles, they are nicely covered by creators. I’ll try to concentrate on getting something out of it.
1. Wires
There is an illustration of simplest way to connect OSLRF-01 to Arduino UNO:
- Laser rangefinder must be powered by stabilized 12V source ( “Vin” ).
- “Zero” pin to A1,
- “Return” to A3 and
- “Sync” to Arduino’s digital 2
- Arduino board has to be powered separately by USB cable or external power source (not displayed)
Thats all
2. Signals
First is worth to mention, that without using “Control” measurements are regularly made on about 37 Hz frequency. “About” is very good description, because frequency is drifting a little all the time. Just after power-on it drifts more:
For more detail: An Arduino Based Laser Rangefinder
French 
English