# Get optical flow Sensor Data without flight controller

**URL:** <https://discuss.px4.io/t/get-optical-flow-sensor-data-without-flight-controller/29995>\
**Category:** Uncategorized\
**Created:** [December 6, 2022, 8:51am UTC](https://discuss.px4.io/t/get-optical-flow-sensor-data-without-flight-controller/29995 "2022-12-06T08:51:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![cnjetter](https://discuss.px4.io/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/ac91a4/32.png) [@cnjetter](https://discuss.px4.io/u/cnjetter)\
**Post date:** [December 6, 2022, 8:51am UTC](https://discuss.px4.io/t/get-optical-flow-sensor-data-without-flight-controller/29995/1 "2022-12-06T08:51:29Z")

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Heyho,

I want to use a optical flow sensor for a project and found the Ark Flow Sensor to be a suitable option, as you guys use it for more sophisticated usecases than I do.  
As I don’t want to build a drone I don’t have any use of a flight controller.

I tried reading out raw can Data from the Sensor running the latest px4 firmware with a usb2can adapter but it seems like it needs to be initialized first by the flight controller.

Is there a way to inititalize the sensor on my computer or with a RPi to make it send the data it generates?

The project is also rather large so I have some difficulties navigating the code. where do I find what sources get built when I build a certain firmware with the “make” command?

Thank you

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**Author:** ![AlexKlimaj](https://discuss.px4.io/user_avatar/discuss.px4.io/alexklimaj/32/14479_2.png) [@AlexKlimaj](https://discuss.px4.io/u/AlexKlimaj)\
**Post date:** [December 7, 2022, 4:36pm UTC](https://discuss.px4.io/t/get-optical-flow-sensor-data-without-flight-controller/29995/2 "2022-12-07T16:36:47Z")

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You can use pydronecan to enumerate and boot the ARK Flow then get the optical flow data.