[m3at]

This is very interesting. Still too expensive for hobby projects, which is fine as it's clearly not their target audience, but it made me wonder. A few years ago, cheaper (albeit shorter range and less accurate) lidar were predicted to be coming soon.

Searching in Chinese marketplaces didn't bring anything below ~$200, anyone know about very low cost lidar?

[msadowski]

The cheapest one you will find will probably be Rplidar or ydlidar x4.

Those sensors will not be great, but you will be able to do SLAM with them.

Here is a review of X4 that I wrote earlier this year: https://msadowski.github.io/ydlidar-x4-review/