In this post we will add a second photointerrupter to our rotary encoder. This will give you information about the direction your rotary device turns. So you will be able to count forward and backword depending on the turning direction. This is necessary e. g. for many positioning application. The encoder we will make is also called a quadrature encoder. Continue reading
In the first and second post of this series you saw the basics of how to use photointerrupters. Now it’s time for practice. We make a rotary encoder. Here we take a single photointerrupter that gives us the pulses we can count. In a later post we will take two of them to get information about the direction of rotation. But now let’s start with the simple version.
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In my second post about photointerrupters I show you how to get things working properly and how to spend only as much energy as necessary. The schematic diagram shows the basic wiring for a photointerrupter like the TCST 2103 that I introduced already in my first post. Now it is time to find the best values for the two resistors. Continue reading
In this post I will show you the basic use of a photointerrupter. The type in this example is a TCST 2103 from VISHAY. There are only two semiconductors included in one case and it is simple to use. But you have to know how… Continue reading