Encoders for 2015 Season

[Sh1ine]

Originally Posted by Qbot2640

Excuse my lack of experience - we have never used encoders, and I desperately want to this year. The Grayhill models referenced above look like potentiometers, for lack of a better description...How are they installed? Do you just couple the shaft to the gearbox shaft?

I understand how the US Digital one's install - in fact, we installed a pair on our robot this fall for the off-season, but never figured out how to wire them up or program them.

We use Grayhill Encoder 63R128 (http://www.digikey.com/product-detai...3069-ND/304478) They are terrific encoder, and Digi key sells them at a good price. We use 128 count encoders for our drive train, and since we have them laying around, they get used for other systems frequently as well. In order to to attach our encoder to our output shaft we use 1/4 OD and 3/16 ID surgical tubing. It sounds sketchy, but works great, it also helps absorb some slight misalignment issues that you might have. Simply slip the tubing over the .250 part of a AM output shaft and the other side slips onto the encoder. Create a bracket to hold it in place and you are good to go.

Here is an image:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B02...ew?usp=sharing

Hope this helps!