Snow Probe

Snow depth measurement using Garmin Lidar Lite v4 sensor. [It's me during one of the many field tests]

Table of Contents

• Description
• Features
• Hardware Setup
• Installation
• Library-Dependency
• Usage
• Contributing
• License
• Contact

Description

Features

• Measures distances using the Garmin Lidar Lite v4 sensor.
• Supports both I2C and Ant Protocol for distance measurement

Hardware Setup

Interfacing an LCD Display (16x2 Character-based)

LCD Pin	Raspberry Pi GPIO Pin
VCC	5V or 3.3V (depends on LCD)
GND	GND
RS	GPIO Pin (e.g., 25)
RW	GND (for write mode)
E	GPIO Pin (e.g., 24)
D4-D7	GPIO Pins (e.g., 23, 17, 21, 22)
LED+	5V (if the backlight is used)
LED-	GND (if backlight is used)

Interfacing a GPS Module (UART Interface)

GPS Module Pin	Raspberry Pi GPIO Pin (UART)
VCC	3.3V
GND	GND
TX	RX (GPIO Pin, e.g., 10)
RX	TX (GPIO Pin, e.g., 8)

Interfacing the Garmin Sensor (I2C)

Sensor Pin	Raspberry Pi GPIO Pin (I2C)
VCC	5V or 3.3V (depending on the sensor)
GND	GND
SDA	GPIO 2 (SDA)
SCL	GPIO 3 (SCL)

Interfacing the Ant Usb dongle

Please follow the blog for https://bin.re/blog/track-your-heartrate-on-raspberry-pi-with-ant/?fbclid=IwAR0b-LjFN6-d7EEYO7c1AOEhAPhWBSdaiynhcVZKetV5C_3aEDBHZ0MGSwI

Library Dependency

At the time of writing the code base we used the following libraries and language

1. OpenAnt (https://github.com/Tigge/openant)
2. I2C (https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_BusDevice) (https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_LIDARLite)
3. GPS (https://github.com/pyserial/pyserial)
4. LCD Display (https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_CharLCD) (https://docs.circuitpython.org/projects/charlcd/en/latest/)
5. Python (>=3.0)

Installation

1. Install Adafruit_CharLCD for controlling character LCD displays:

   pip3 install adafruit-circuitpython-charlcd
   

2. Enable I2C on your Raspberry Pi and install the necessary libraries:

   pip3 install adafruit-circuitpython-busdevice
   pip3 install adafruit-circuitpython-lidarlite (Still need to check and decide)
   

3. Install pyserial for serial communication with GPS:

   pip3 install pyserial

4. Install openant for wireless communication over ANT protocol:

   pip install openant or pip install git+https://github.com/Tigge/openant#egg=openant