Angle Sensor for Vex

[tacman1123]

I'm looking for a rotation sensor for the Vex, an angle sensor. I have the optical shaft encoder, but I see that it doesn't measure the direction that the shaft is rotating, so it's impossible to use it to calculate the angle.

The new Mindstorm NXT kit will have angle measurements (to 1%) built into their servo motors, something which I think will increase the precision of Mindstorm bots significantly.

I've also played around with the idea of using the optical shaft encoder and some other mechanism for seeing which direction an axle is turning, but can't come up with anything that immediately responds to a change in direction. An angle sensor is really what I'm looking for.

Thx,

Tac