Supercharge your SPIKE LEGO Robotics with a Laser Distance Sensor

Have you ever run into the limitation of the SPIKE or Robot Inventor Distance Sensor? For a few dollars, you can buy superfast and accurate laser distance sensors. But these sensors are not plug and play, so I worked long and hard to integrate this seamlessly into a SPIKE Prime creations robot. I’m super excited about the result. Read on to find out how you can do it too!

Transforming Custom Electronics into LEGO-Compatible Sensors

The key to making custom electronics, like the i2c VL53L0X VCSEL laser distance sensor, appear as regular LEGO sensors is our LMS-ESP32 board. That board runs our python code that converts i2c signals into the very same signals that a real Distance Sensor sends. This way you can use it with word blocks in Pybricks and SPIKE Prime. As the sensor, I used the vl53L0x. It’s like giving your LEGO creations a Distance Sensor on steroids—they can now see and interact with their environment faster than ever before.

Building a SPIKE Laser Distance sensor Robot to navigate around the box

To showcase this technology, I built a simple robot designed to navigate around a box. The heart of this robot is the laser distance sensor, which provides fast and accurate measurements. This allows the robot to drive around obstacles at full speed—yes, even at 100% speed with large wheels! The performance is simply astounding.

I had to film this robot at 60 frames per second, to make it look smooth. It’s that fast!

A Simple SPIKE word blocks program for following a wall

Here’s a glimpse at how straightforward word block programming can be with this setup. While this program is SPIKE, you can do something very similar in Pybricks with a Drive Base.

To get a sense of how fast the sensor measures distance, I made it print the number of readings per second. That’s 32 accurate readings per second! A blink of an eye is 100 to 150 milliseconds, and in that time, this sensor reads the distance three to four times.

The long hard road to LEGO Sensor emulation

Developing the emulator code that makes this possible wasn’t an overnight feat—it took weeks of dedication. Thanks to this code, which is now part of the free PUPRemote library, I’ve made significant breakthroughs. I had help in this endeavor: Ste7an was invaluable for his help with protocol sniffing and code reviewing. Moreover, a big thanks to the Pybricks team for their accurate reverse engineering and their open-source documentation.

Python code for emulating a LEGO Distance Sensor with a vl53L0x

The code for this project and for all sensor emulation is part of our PUPRemote library. In this particular case, you need three files on your LMS-ESP32 board:

• main.py to read the sensor
• lpf2.py to emulate the sensor
• VL53L0X.py to communicate with the sensor. I used Thonny to upload the files.

What Will You Build with a laser distance sensor?

Now that you’ve seen what’s possible with the LMS-ESP32 board and a laser distance sensor, it’s your turn to innovate. What amazing projects will you come up with? Build something unique and share it with us! Tag @antonsmindstorms on your social media posts—we can’t wait to see your creations.

The potential for custom electronics in LEGO robotics has never been more exciting. With tools like the LMS-ESP32 board and support from communities like ours at AntonsMindstorms.com, there’s no limit to what you can create. Whether you’re a hobbyist or an educator looking to inspire students through STEM/STEAM activities, these tools offer endless opportunities for creativity and learning.

Please remember—share your projects and tag @antonsmindstorms. Let’s build an inspiring community together.