I built essentially the same kind of contraption for my PhD, except I used a gimbal scanner (±90 degrees in two axes) and an industrial 1D LIDAR (a Dimetix FLS-C). You get some interesting calibration problems, because if your LIDAR isn't perfectly centred on the rotation centre of both axes, you'll get offsets; in one direction you'll overshoot, in the other you'll undershoot. The basic trig works well enough for demonstrations though.
Similar downside: the LIDAR I used was extremely accurate (±1 mm stdev), but could only capture at around 20Hz. 500Hz would have been a luxury! I believe I could have pushed it to 200Hz with analogue out, but I wanted the accuracy.
I built essentially the same kind of contraption for my PhD, except I used a gimbal scanner (±90 degrees in two axes) and an industrial 1D LIDAR (a Dimetix FLS-C). You get some interesting calibration problems, because if your LIDAR isn't perfectly centred on the rotation centre of both axes, you'll get offsets; in one direction you'll overshoot, in the other you'll undershoot. The basic trig works well enough for demonstrations though.
Similar downside: the LIDAR I used was extremely accurate (±1 mm stdev), but could only capture at around 20Hz. 500Hz would have been a luxury! I believe I could have pushed it to 200Hz with analogue out, but I wanted the accuracy.