- Sat Feb 25, 2017 2:39 pm
#193593
I am considering ways to detect the movement and position of a "lazy susan" type turntable. Putting a rotary encoder on-axis is for various reasons impractical, so I'm thinking about some kind of optical linear encoder for the outer edge; if I were to decorate the edge of the turntable with a suitably patterned tape, I should be able to "read" it with a simple optical sensor.
It seems to me that somewhere in the 'verse, someone must be making linear edge encoding tape for just this purpose. But so far I haven't found any off the shelf product in the Arduino, robotics, Maker realm. Does anyone know of such an animal? do I have to design my own? has anyone else tried to capture movement and absolute position of a rotating or linear slide by optical encoding one of the surfaces (moving or stationary) and mounting a sensor on the other?
I suppose in the worst case I could trigger Hall effect switches with a series of magnets, but that seems ugly compared to some kind of optical read head.
It seems to me that somewhere in the 'verse, someone must be making linear edge encoding tape for just this purpose. But so far I haven't found any off the shelf product in the Arduino, robotics, Maker realm. Does anyone know of such an animal? do I have to design my own? has anyone else tried to capture movement and absolute position of a rotating or linear slide by optical encoding one of the surfaces (moving or stationary) and mounting a sensor on the other?
I suppose in the worst case I could trigger Hall effect switches with a series of magnets, but that seems ugly compared to some kind of optical read head.