Talk:Laser rangefinder

Untitled
This page should either be merged or made more compatible with the LIDAR page.--David Streutker 20:15, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Against merge: IMHO the LIDAR stuff should be removed from Laser range-finder article. In my eyes LIDAR and Laser range-finders are two different sets of devices even if they share the same principle and a LIDAR can also measure distances. Alureiter 16:10, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Against merge. Agree with Alureiter: LIDAR stuff should be moved to LIDAR page and this page should be used for laser rangefinders. Mattopia 11:03, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Against too, I thought of Laser range-finder for gadgets used in construction like Leica Distos (image added) or Bosch DLE. --Marc Lacoste 20:55, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

So I removed the merge template --Marc Lacoste 20:55, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Laser Rangefinders and 3-D Computer Modelling
The Laser Rangefinders and 3-D Computer Modelling section is very generic and not complete. The subject is better discussed in the 3D scanner article. I propose to shorten this section a lot an refer to that article.ALoopingIcon 15:50, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Approve --Marc Lacoste 20:55, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Nikon Biased
The article as of today reads "Nikon have a superb product, supplying handheld rangefinders at prices well in line with the rest of sports equipment." This is biased and should not be part of Wikipedia. Maybe Nikon has a very good product, maybe not. Actually I personally believe they have good rangefinders, but they are not the best on the market. I suggest that some important laser range finder companies are listed in the article, but the reader should decide or do his own research, what is "superb". Michilans (talk) 08:10, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

How do they measure?
How do they measure something moving at the speed of light? Dudtz 8/3/06 8:45 PM EST

By measuring phase offset (using an interferometer) between forward and reflected waves, then using the speed of light in m/s to convert the phase offset to distance in m, then displaying meters or converting measured results to yards. Yaf 20:02, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

There is also the technique of combining a laser aligned with the optical axis of a digital camera and using a computer to detect the laser dot in the image and calculate the distance based on the relative position of the laser dot to the center of the image. For example https://sites.google.com/site/todddanko/home/webcam_laser_ranger  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.3.58.122 (talk) 08:15, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Military Application
Does the laser targeting mentioned here actually use a rangefinder, or is it simply laser illumination? 134.50.238.66 21:44, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
 * That part of the article have to be completly rewriten. You only need laser illumination for targeting. This part of the article talk about the counter measure against laser rangefinding and not about the fact that laser range finding is perhaps THE most important element armored engagement. The laser rangefinder permit a tank to fire at a target about 1-2 second after the bore sight is axed toward it. They just laze it, let the targeting computer do the instant calculation let the bore move a litle to adjust for the distance and fire. Without a laser a gunner have to estimate the distance himself and fire through an optical sight or enter the distance into the targeting computer before firing. -- Esurnir 17:06, 16 May 2007 (UTC)


 * The B&S LF2 measured and fed to the gunner's sight the distance to the lazed target at ranges out to 10,000 metres with an accuracy of +/- 10 metres at 10,000 metres.

"Range" section should be "Error"
It seems to me that the section currently labeled s "Range" should be "Error" as all the facts presented relate to distortions that result in a loss of accuracy, —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.98.76.131 (talk) 05:12, 12 April 2007 (UTC).

Hyphen in the name?
If no one disagrees, I'll work on renaming the article to "Laser rangefinder" to remove the hyphen. As far as I can tell "rangefinder" is the more commonly used spelling. When I do this I'll make sure to update pages linking to it. Gh5046 (talk) 16:53, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Commercial construction products
There is no reference to commercial products like the Leica Disto, Bosch, Hilti or other lines. Is there a page for these products - a link would be helpful. Do they use the same system of measurement? (I doubt it, as their accuracy (+- 3mm) and short range (30-200m) would make timing difficult.)


 * This has been completed. Gh5046 (talk) 23:15, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

The issue of resolution remains: How does a cheap handheld device resolve time-of-flight to 3mm (which implies a temporal resolution of 20 pico-seconds)? Is this measured directly? I suspect these use gated bursts of amplitude modulated optical output. The gross delay of the burst envelope measured to 1nsec would resolve the distance to about 150 mm = 1 nsec * c / 2. The quaduture phase delay to a few degrees might resolve two more orders of magnitude. If so, clarifying the explanation given in the 'Calculation' section would be appreciated. Stubya (talk) 15:52, 29 May 2010 (UTC)


 * My understanding is that they modulate a continuous beam with an RF sinusoid and measure the phase difference. This is described in the Time-of-flight_camera article.  -- David Woolley (talk) 13:38, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Missing the method actually used by laser tape measures
Although there is a section on laser tape measures, my understanding is that they actually use the RF modulation technique, described near the beginning of Time-of-flight_camera, but there is no mention, in the current article, of this technique, which gets round the extreme timing requirements noted near the beginning of the current article.

Sorry, but I don't have any primary sources to hand at the moment.

Also there seems to be a lot of overlapping articles in this area.

-- David Woolley (talk) 13:28, 11 March 2015 (UTC)