[MagnusWootton]

I was always planning on using a resistor wire and a little thing attached to the shaft which slides along it, like a variable resistor, for the positional sensor.

But I just learnt about the hall sensor a bit more, it looks superior, in the way it can be full solid state, with no moving parts.



When the central sensor (The two front and back soldered wire connections) passes over a magnet, a very small amount of charge will run around the central connected loop,  put this into a base of a transistor and u can amp it up to a very low amplitude for the arduino to read in.   Its a very small amount of electricity but its definitely there.

Compared to any other encoder its superior because there's nothing mechanical to break down,  just the rotor hovering underneath the sensor probes is all it needs to non-contact detect it as it passes under the sensors, which are just glued to the outside of the motor, really simply.

They use this for car engines as well as positional sensors for robot actuators,  because its superior.

Np.  If u know how to do this, its cheap and u dont need to buy stepper motors, dc motors will do, only problem for me really is the fact it requires transistors, but they are less than a dollar each, the smallest transistors of all will do for it.   Its pretty nice.


I have a crazy idea to get rid of the transistors and replace them with passive capacitors, along with the h-bridge driver that runs the rotor.  I might be able to get that on a nice pcb, which is tracks only and has no components except some way of getting resistors onto it.