Hello All
I’ve just finished my Lidar project. It’s based on the Garmin Lidar light V3 module which is really nothing more than a laser range finder sending distance measurements out through I2C. The range finder is hooked into an STM32, which sends UART data through a mechanical slip ring and then down through a rotating shaft to a second stationary STM32. The second STM32 dumps everything to an SD card. The top STM32 controls the elevation stepper motor, the bottom STM32 controls the azimuth stepper motor. Motor synchronization is via the slip ring. PCB design was via eagle. Mechanically, it was all designed in Fusion 360 with the parts machined in my hobby workshop. I’ve used the Unity 3D game engine for the rendering.
Attached is a screen shot of the results. It's a Lidar scan of my back yard, and you can see an animated render on YouTube at this link
David