what would you use to measure a distance 600..1300mm?

[ag123]

they may not meet the 'industrial' requirements, hence u'd need to decide if you would play with those

yeah, I need 5mm of precision, but I don't know if the above dispersion data plot is really trust-able. Something tells me this sensor is 10mm of precision if not worse. I'd like to investigate, so I have just bought a couple from Amazon

take several measurements and with different sensors and taking an average?

Kind of sensor fusion? Nice idea.

i ordered 2 pieces from aliexpress as i decided i'd like to play with them, apparently these little sensors may have a variety of uses.
(concur with the ebay digressions).
i'd think it may be 'worth' trying out as the specs don't seem too bad, and costs is moderate. i'm not really good nor rigorous with stats, but that given that the stats is based on standard deviations (i.e. normal distribution), taking multiple sample i'd guess may make the sample mean closer to the actual mean.
my guess is this may make it more accurate, but there is no basis for this intuition and i'm just speculating.
my guess is using perhaps 2 sensors taking multiple samples and averaging them may literally work.

[dannyf]

Alternatives?

depending on the problem and approach.

linear (or even rotary) encoders would be a good approach if you can go between two points.

for contactless, sound pulses would be a good approach. capacitance is another - but at 1300mm, you need a lot of areas.

others would be light intensity, or heat dissipation (aka air mass meter in a car)...

[DiTBho]

capacitance

capacitance? which sensor?

light intensity

light intensity? which sensor?