Chief Delphi - Turn 90 Degrees

A potentiometer.. or "pot" for short is a electrical component that increases or decreases resistance to flow based on the position of a lead which is attached to a cylinder. A common use for these are volume controls or light dimmer switches.

We can use these on our robots by utilizing the analog input pins. These pins are able to read an analog value, which will give you the amount of voltage flowing into them, rather than just a 1 or 0 from a digital input. As the resistance increases in the pot, the analog value on the RC goes down because more voltage is being dropped in the pot. So, using that value we can figure out how far something is rotated.

The difference between a multi turn pot and an encoder is that one is analog and one is digital. A multi turn pot works on the same basis as a regular pot, but it is able to revolve many times. An encoder is basically a switch that gets turned on a set number of times in a full rotation.