Line Sensors

[KHall]

The sensors we received in our KOP actually have the wiring diagram printed on the back of each sensor. On ours, Blue and Brown go to the 12V PDB. Black and white are signal. Found out that if you hook up the power wires backwards, it doesn't hurt the sensor, it just does not work.

Connect the white and black wires to a DIO port on the sidecar. Each sensor acts like a simple switch. As a switch, the signal wires must connect to the outside two pins of a DIO port. (One sensor per DIO port). And since it is just a switch (on / off ) it doesn't matter which color (black or white) goes to which of the two pins on the DIO port.

That's it -- no resistors, transistors or anything else are needed. We bench tested this yesterday with an additional six feet of copper wire and it worked fine. We next need to test it under different lighting conditions to see what, if anything, might be needed or helpful to increase range and reliability.

One last thought. I've seen some talk about connecting cables to reduce overall wiring. If you take that path, be sure to leave yourself some way to quickly replace a sensor in case of accidental damage. Just remember, old Murphy is always sitting in the first row at every regional event. Yep, Murphy is a big fan of FRC.

Have fun!

KHall