Non Contact Magnetic Encoder with PWM Output

[Tom Bottiglieri]

http://www.austriamicrosystems.com/0...try/AS5040.htm

I stumbled across this today...

Apparently, this company austriamicrosystems makes an IC which can measure the rotation of a magnet (resolution of 1024 parts per revolution). It has an onboard processor and A/D converter, and does all the stuff we would to do process encoder data in our robot code right on board the chip. It can output rotation data in quadrature, SSI, or PWM.

I cant seem to find how much this costs, but they will send free trials to corporations.

This is the first I've seen of this type of sensor. Does anyone know a little more, or think this may be something worth looking into? As far as I can see (without money on the mind), something like this could simplify our bot's code by leaps and bounds and give a much easier means to closed loop control, with less chance of error or breakage.