I picked up a nifty little XV-11 Lidar Controller and bought a broken Neato XV-11 for $28 on eBay.

When I got the XV-11 it appeared to be well and truly dead. The batteries were fully charged, but the LCD wouldn’t turn on. Which was fine. All I wanted was the Lidar sensor.

I disassembled the XV-11 and got the sensor off. Connecting the motor to 5v made it go round, and providing 5v on the appropriate line gave me the following on the serial port.

Piccolo Laser Distance Scanner
Copyright (c) 2009-2011 Neato Robotics, Inc.
All Rights Reserved

Loader V2.5.15295
CPU F2802x/c001
Serial WTD10713AA-0240567
LastCal [5371726C]
Runtime V2.6.15295
#Spin...3 ESCs or BREAK to abort...

and a bunch of binary data if I spin the turret by hand.

I got the Lidar Controller today and hooked it up:

and it seems to work. I tried running the Visual Test and was able to get this output:

which is my office (about 12 feet x 20 feet).

Very cool.

This should be useable on my indoor platform that I’m putting together.