Piico and Dist Sensor VLX531X not working

Support Raspberry Pi
1

I have connected the VLX531X distance sensor to my Pico W as follows :
Pico Pin 1 (SDA) to VLX531X Pin SDA
Pico Pin 2 (SCL) to VLX531X Pin SCL
Pico Pin 36 (3V3 Out) to VLX531X Pin VSS (3.3Volt)
Pico Pin 38 ( Gnd) to VLX531X Pin Gnd
I am using the 3 files as defined in the YouTube tutorial. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ly0Ga2yK_d0&t=1s) but not using the expansion board as shown
I have checked with other software that the distance sensor is at address 0x29

I am getting the following error when I run the main.py file

MPY: soft reboot
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “”, line 4, in
File “PiicoDev_VL53L1X.py”, line 112, in init
File “PiicoDev_VL53L1X.py”, line 136, in reset
File “PiicoDev_VL53L1X.py”, line 125, in writeReg
OSError: [Errno 5] EIO

image

How does the software determine on what I2C channel the sensor is connected?
Please assist what could cause this error.

2

If you follow the PiicoDev guides, certain assumptions are made. In this case you need to define the pins you want to use, since they are different from the PiicoDev scheme.

initialise the device as follows

from PiicoDev_VL53L1X import PiicoDev_VL53L1X
from machine import Pin
dist = PiicoDev_VL53L1X(bus=0, sda=Pin(1), scl=Pin(2), freq=400_000)

Alternatively, connect SDA to GP8, and SCL to GP9 to use the example code as-is with no changes.