Rangefinder to Cube Serial Cable

Cable Build

The Benewake TFMini-S rangefinder connector is a 4-pin JST-GH. The port availabe on the Airbot Mini Carrier Board is the 8-pin JST-GH GPS-1/Serial 3. We will build a 4 inch harness beteen these two connections. The pinout for the mini carrier board can be found here. The pinout for the Benewake TFMini-S rangefinder can be found here

_images/serial3_pinout.jpg _images/tfmini-s_pinout.jpg

The pins on the Serial 3 connector that we need are:

  1. +5V

  2. Serial_3 - TX

  3. Serial_3 - RX

  4. (Not needed) I2C1-SLC

  5. (Not needed) I2C2-SDA

  6. (Not needed) Safety Switch

  7. (Not needed) Safety Switch LED

  8. GND

The pins on the rangefinder connector that we need are:

  1. GND

  2. +5V

  3. RXD

  4. TXD

We have to connect the RX each connector to the TX on the other. The connections should be:

Serial 3

RangeFinder

  1. +5V

  1. +5V

  1. TX

  1. RX

  1. RX

  1. TX

  1. GND

  1. GND

The result harness will look something like this:

_images/rangefinder_harness.jpg

After building the cable, connect the range finder and enable the rangefinder by the flight controller by setting SENS_TFMINI_CFG to GPS1. You can then test the rangefinder using MAVLink Inspector in QGroundControl as discussed here.