An unexpected revisit to my earlier post on mouse encoder hacking sparked a timely opportunity to reexamine quadrature encoders, this time with a clearer lens and a more targeted focus on their signal ...

If you are a novice to rotary encoders for human-machine interface, there is a potential pit-fall. Otherwise called quadrature encoders, they deliver two-bit gray-scale binary on rotation, with the ...

The sensing mechanism in an incremental optical rotary encoder consists primarily of a light source, code wheel, and optical detector. As the code wheel turns, a ring of alternating opaque and ...

Reading quadrature encoder signals at high speeds (e.g., 1MHz, or, 1m/s with a resolution of 1µm) often requires dedicated hardware. This Design Idea shows a simple scheme to accomplish this function ...

Encoders are widely used in the motion control and automation industry to monitor the position and speed of motors. This information can be used by the motion control electronics to detect if the ...

Rotary quadrature encoders often are used to command digital potentiometers or digital controllers, and quadrature decoding is typically performed in a programmable device (like an FPGA or ...

A high-speed quadrature encoder module provides simultaneous input and decoding for up to eight incremental quadrature encoders at resolutions of 16, 32, or 48 bits. The USB-QUAD08 data acquisition ...

Everyone has at least one extra mouse laying around; why not get some use out of it? Disassembling the mouse you can get two optical encoders plus four infrared emitter/detector pairs. Then you can ...