SERVO – July 2008 – Encoder Matching

SERVO July 2008

One of the joys of the robotics hobby is mastering the art of interfacing.  A lot of the parts are already in front of us and we just need to find ways to make them work together.  Recently, I ran into a problem with a pair of quadrature encoders for the drive train on one of my robots. The encoders themselves worked fine and were generating perfect quadrature outputs. However, they were sending out data faster than the controller could handle at higher speeds. As a result, the encoder readings were worthless and could not be trusted.  This article explains how to make an encoder processor that sits between your encoders and your controller.  It will scale the readings and keep track of the intermediate counts so no information is lost.

Below is the link to the SERVO magazine where you can find the article:

http://www.servomagazine.com/index.php/magazine/issue/2008/07