Meaning of TOF distance

nnguyen · Nov 9, 2018

I'm new to Tello and I'm trying to write a simple program where the Tello flies toward a wall and stops (or turns) before hitting it.
Using the official SDK (https://dl-cdn.ryzerobotics.com/downloads/tello/20180910/Tello SDK Documentation EN_1.3.pdf), I send a "tof?" message.
The return values seems unpredictable. I thought it meant the distance between the Tello and an object in front of it, but I get numbers that do not make sense..

Am I misunderstanding the meaning of "TOF distance"? or is there some problem with my drone's sensors?

thank you.

Droner · Nov 13, 2018

Hi there,

I'm pretty sure the TOF sensor you're talking about is the one located underneath the Tello, so it probably measures the distance to the floor, NOT the distance to a nearby wall

Hopes it helps

nnguyen · Nov 13, 2018

Thank you, that does help. So TOF is the same as "height"?

an3k · Dec 14, 2018

As far as I understood it based on a few flights: "height" is the height above the starting point, "tof" is the current distance to ground.

Eg. you started from a 50 cm high table (height = 50, tof = 50), you flew off the table (height = 50, tof = 100) and descended 50 cm (height = 0, tof = 50).