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Measure the dark.

Nocturne N1 is a lidar for machines that move at night. It brings its own light — pulses of infrared, timed on their way back — and knows the distance to everything around it, to two centimetres.

Order a dev kitWatch the light come back

31ns

The road comes back first.

Distance is time. Every nanosecond the light is away is fifteen centimetres of road — out and back. The dark circle is the one place it can't see: straight down, below its lowest laser.

21.9m

Someone, crossing.

A shape and a distance, not a guess from pixels. There's no image in a lidar, so there is no face to keep.

3echoes

Rain answers first.

Every drop sends back a faint echo before the street does. Nocturne listens for up to three per pulse and keeps the last — the one from the street behind the rain.

7.1s

Far enough to stop gently.

A truck waiting at the lights, 198 metres ahead. At 100 km/h that's 7.1 seconds — time to ease off, not to brake hard.

2µs

The whole street.

Three hundred metres out and back in two microseconds — too quick for anything here to move more than a hair. This page let a whole sweep's pulses leave at once; the N1 fires ten sweeps a second.

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The sensor

One instrument, three hundred metres all the way round.

The street above is one sweep of the N1 at these numbers — the lasers, the firings and the range are the ones on this page.

The N1 in elevation: 103 mm across, 76 mm tall, on a 70 mm mount.1037670 mm905 nm
Range
300 m200 m at 10% reflectivity
Precision
±2 cmthe person above, to the centimetre
Field of view
360° × 40°+15° to −25°
Resolution
0.18° × 0.1°vertical, at the horizon
Points
2.6 million / s128 lasers × 2,048 × 10 Hz
Echoes
Up to 3 per pulsethe rain above
Laser
905 nmClass 1, eye-safe
Power · weight
18 W · 0.9 kg
Sealing
IP69K−40 to 85 °C
Connection
Gigabit EthernetPTP time sync

Developers

Every point, straight into your stack.

ROS 2 driver
Point clouds on a topic, time-stamped by PTP, in the frames your stack already uses.
C++, Python, TypeScript
The same API in each, streaming sweeps as they arrive or reading recordings.
Recorded night drives
Forty hours of streets like this one, to build against before the kit arrives.
people.ts
import { connect } from "@nocturne/sdk";

const n1 = await connect("192.168.1.201");

for await (const sweep of n1.sweeps()) {
  const people = sweep.points.filter((p) => p.kind === "person");
  // every point: x, y, z, range, time, reflectivity, kind
  console.log(sweep.time, people.length);
}

Pricing

Start in software. Put one on a roof when you’re ready.

  • Simulator

    Freeno hardware

    • The full SDK and ROS 2 driver
    • Recorded night drives
    • This street, to range yourself
    Start in the simulator

  • Dev kit

    $4,900one-off

    • One N1, a roof mount and cables
    • 12 months of firmware updates
    • An engineer on your integration
    • Ships in three weeks
    Order a dev kit

  • Fleet

    Talk to usfrom 50 units

    • Volume pricing
    • Calibration at the factory
    • A warranty for the vehicle's life
    Talk to sales

FAQ

Before you put it on a roof.

Is it safe to look at?

Yes. The N1 is a Class 1 laser product under IEC 60825-1: eye-safe under all conditions of normal use, including looking straight into it.

What happens in rain, fog and snow?

Rain and snow send back faint early echoes; the N1 keeps the last echo of each pulse, which comes from the surface behind them. Dense fog does shorten range — we publish by how much, per density, in the datasheet.

Does it record people?

It measures shapes and distances. There's no image, so there are no faces and nothing to identify anyone by — a person is a set of points, not a picture.

Measure your own dark.

The simulator is free, has the N1’s API, and is this street. Build tonight; put one on a roof when you’re ready.

Order a dev kitStart in the simulator