I continue to have problems with the various short comings with outdoor sensors - people sensors that is. Are there any good out door sensors that are not plagued by sunlight, shadows, rain … excetera. Then add the fact that they need to be low cost current and battery operated and it seems to be short coming on all of the range finders. I found water proof ultrasonic ones but they seem to work on hard bodies only and are very expensive and big… Help…
Thanks for reaching out to us on this.
It might be best to self-engineer weather-proofing for your particular conditions; most sensors are designed to be protected from the elements during use. Same thing for light/dark…the design needs to yield consistent lighting characteristics to the sensor. Perhaps using 2 or more sensors https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14722, and averaging their output into your program, could prove useful here.
Hopefully a manufacturer will debut something soon that meets all of these factors for a lower price point, but for now the offerings we have are the current state-of-the-art; NASA recently used one of our LiDAR sensors on the Mars Rover! https://www.sparkfun.com/news/3791
Hope this helps, and happy sparking!