Using an Optical Encoder to Measure Angles

April 23, 2014

I have interfaced a 200 LC QR145 to a DL06 PLC to show how to convert from a line count to mechanical degrees. This type of conversion may be useful for any application of optical encoder to measure angles. To calculate a degree measurement we divide 360 by the line...

Optical Encoder Pulse Counting with a PLC

April 19, 2014

I have interfaced a QR145 200 Line Count Optical Encoder to a DL06 PLC and set up the PLC for mode 20 ‘High speed Up/Down counter’. Here is a video of Optical Encoder Counting: Below is the ladder logic code for programming the PLC to count pulses from the QR145...

Ladder Logic to Decode Direction from an Optical Encoder

April 15, 2014

I set up a QR145 optical encoder on a Direct Logic DL06 PLC with some simple Ladder Logic to determine direction based on the A and B incremental inputs. Below is a video of the optical encoder in action: In the PLC I used (DL06), the inputs are filtered, which...

Optical Encoder Incremental Signal Measurement

March 26, 2014

While most of us are familiar with how to measure something in mechanical degrees, incremental encoder signals are measured in electrical degrees. 360 electrical degrees is the period in which a signal completes one high to low transition. This can be in any sort of waveform, but for encoders electrical...

How to Time Optical Encoder Commutation Channels to a BLDC Motor

March 17, 2014

Optical Encoder Brushless DC Motor Timing Using Back EMF The optical encoders we work with have a set of three Commutation tracks (U,V,W) which correspond to the three phases of the motor (R,S,T). Alignment of the optical encoder commutation signals to a BLDC motor could be thought of as being...

Optical Quadrature Encoders

February 22, 2014

An optical quadrature encoder is an incremental encoder with outputs consisting of two incremental channels that are out of phase by 90 electrical degrees. In each part of the encoder cycle, the two signals are in unique positions relative to each other. By comparing the difference between the high and...

Understanding Options on the QDH20 Industrial Rotary Encoder

November 20, 2013

The QDH20 Industrial Rotary Encoder is an IP66 sealed encoder made for the rugged duty of an industrial application. Due to the huge array of configuration options, this optical encoder has over 200,000 possible ways that it can be configured. While this is certainly an advantage to an end user...

Better Edge Determination for Rotary Encoders

September 14, 2013

A standard edge sensing scheme for optical rotary encoders is to square up the raw analog sine wave by comparing it against a given voltage. If your analog signal has a 2Vpp amplitude, the value at which you switch off of, creating the edges of your square waves, could be...

E-mail on Creating a Post Quad Encoder Signal

August 13, 2013

We see that this sampling rate essentially correctly "maps" the waveform, introducing some phase shift error. Depending on where sampling occurs this error may be as high as just under 90 electrical degrees, but does not directly give you 4X the frequency.

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