Can anyone tell me what the optical sensor returns to the RC in terms of a number (i.e. if the optical sensor sees white, what will it tell the brain?)
1 
*jeremy
Ergh.
Read my sig.
Thereāre two digital outputs (either 1 or 0) on the Banner Optical Sensor. When the sensor sees its reflection, one is high (on) and the other is low (off), and when the sensor is not seeing the reflection, the opposite is true, the one which was low is high, and the one which was high is low.
*Originally posted by Jeremy_Mc *
**1*jeremy **
or Zeroā¦your choice! 
It depends which wire you use for the digital input (black or white).
Posted by Jnadke (last year):
Hook the brown to + (12V circuit breaker), blue to - (ground).
Donāt tie black and white together.
When nothing is sensed, the circuit for the black is closed (1) and the white is open (0). When the light is reflected and sensed, the black is open (0) and the white is closed (1).
Just hook both white and black to SEPARATE digital inputs and debug the variables. You can find out by trial and error. When you figure it out, you only really need 1 wire to detect 1 or 0.
If we supply 12V power to the sensor, then
What happens if we plug the sensor outputs to
the robot controllerās (RC) digital input?
Couldnāt the amount of current, and voltage
going to the digital input blow up the circuits
in the RC? I though we could only supply
voltages in the range of zero to five volts.
When the optical sensor āseesā something, it will connect the sensor wire to ground, not to +12V. You are correct to be careful about how much voltage you are pumping through the RC, but in this case you are safe. Likewise, when you wire up limit switches, etc, always connect them between ground (from the RC switch port) and the switch pin.
The 12V power source is for powering the light source on the optical sensor. None of it gets sent to the robot controller.
The robot input is actually a positive lead that supplies 5V @ a maximum of 10mA. This is far too little to power the sensor.