Some of us may have extensive experience with these maxbotix z1 sensors. so I thought it may be quicker to just ask…I wonder how far from the floor should these sensors be mounted in such a way that they still cover low profile obstacles, assuming these sensors being used on RC chasis robot?
Edited: Please excuse me for posting in wrong room.
-Thanks!
with an ez1, if your object is 1/8th inch or bigger, 6" off the ground should just pick it up about 1.5-2ft away.
A 1inch object will be detected from 2.3-5 feet away with the sensor 1ft high.
Have a play with it yourself to see 
Mark,
What I am concerning is if it is practical to mount Z1 on top of a small robot which is as high as an open laptop, would it be a problem that it’s beam is too wide that protentially cause signal to bound back from ground too soon before it even hit objects that is 2-3 meters away and so produce fault signal ?
I have not play with it enough but if that is the case, how one solves that problem?
-Thanks!
the ground should not reflect you signal that way. it should send it further out from the robot unless it pointed directly at the ground. With sonar echo is the problem Reciieving multiple signals back at different times. You handle that by processing only the first signal received back from the device.
as bstag has said, it shouldn’t be a problem however i’m not sure how the maxbotix will handle this considering it does all the processing itself.
Easiest way to find out - grab my sensor class of the wiki (has a maxbotix driver in there) and start testing.