Got my Pixy cmu5 last week, a cute little camra that delivers i2c data about size and position within the image of recognised colour blobs. I intend to use it for laser based range data. 

I have set up a line laser about 10cm below the camra projecting a horizontal laser line. I've used a piece of pvc pipe to split the laser line into descrete sections. The camra reports the location and size of each section of the laser line and with a little trig magic I am able to translate this info into vectors (distance and angle).

Currently the line laser I have (3mw) isn't powerfull enough for this to work on dark surfaces beyond about 1 meter in a well lit room. But on white walls I'm getting good results up to about 3 meters.