Long range Sharp IR sensors are used to measure the range to distant objects at ranges up to 150 cm. These work great on robots for obstacle detection and navigation and can be mounted on servos for radar-like object detection.

Each sensor also comes with wires.

Formulas for Converting Voltage to Range

Try some of these algorithms to convert the measured analog voltage to range in centimeters on a device like an BoardX or Arduino:

• Arduino Library: https://code.google.com/p/gp2y0a21yk-library/

• From Voltage to Distance in Centimeters:

  range (cm) = 306.439 + voltage * (-512.611 + voltage * (382.268 + voltage * (-129.893 + voltage * 16.2537)))

If you need extra analog to digital conversion channels to read several of these, we'd highly recommend checking out our ADC-X Analog to Digital Converter Add-on. It gives you 8 channels of analog data via I2C with 8bits of quick precision.