Quote:
Originally Posted by Jetweb
The BANNER Sensors mentioned above are great sensors.
For this application you may also want to consider a current sensor on the roller/vacuum motor, then you dont have to worry about placing a beam sensor or reflective tape or anything like that. (if you have no active possession mechanism ignore this comment)
|
Depending on the application, an encoder could work as well. It would detect a drop in speed that comes with acquiring a ball. The beam sensor seems like the best solution. It is simple, requiring only either an integrated sensor and reflective tape or a separate emiter/reciever, and feeds the output straight into a DIO pin. Plain and simple: a boolean value that tells you flat out DO I HAVE A BALL OR NOT? even if the ball is only sorta on your collection mechanism or the roller isn't running.
As for setting up the sensor, I recommend you power up the robot and look at the sensor output while mounting it. This can tell you if you have everything lined up and the software can see it.