I am trying to better understand this note about the VL53L5CX:
A note on choosing a board: The VL53L5CX is unique in that it requires its firmware to be loaded at power-on over the I2C bus. Because this firmware is ~90k bytes, we brecommend a microcontroller with enough flash to store VL53L5CX’s firmware as well as your program code. Sorry, Uno’s are out. But didn’t you
Does this mean that the firmware has to be loaded to the sensor every time you power on the sensor? Or can the firmware be flashed once and then powered on subsequently and the sensor used?
At each power on reset, a staggering 86,000 bytes of firmware have to be sent to the sensor.
At 100kHz, this can take ~9.4s. By increasing the clock speed, we can cut this time down to ~1.4s.
So, you won’t have to re-load anything onto the MCU, but it will take at least ~1.4s to startup
I’m not sure what your issue actually is, but it’s difficult to see how it could possibly be my response…Nothing I said was unprofessional, inaccurate, or a pejorative.
However, we do NOT tolerate name-calling or cursing in our forums, we are a family-friendly company. If you cannot participate meaningfully, we’re happy to not have you as a customer.
To be fair, I didn’t see any sarcasm. I’m a regular here and TS-Russell responded the way he would to anyone. I’m certain he didn’t mean to be an asshole.
You do need to upload the firmware to the sensor every time it’s powered. Usually you’d store the firmware in your MCU but it’s also possible to put it in an external EEPROM and then have your controller copy it from EEPROM to the device. A I2C or SPI EEPROM large enough to hold the firmware should only cost you a few bucks and would be a work around if your MCU is too limited but it will take a certain amount of time to transfer the data.
