×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

Digital distance measuring wheel
2

Digital distance measuring wheel

Digital distance measuring wheel

(OP)
I am trying to make a distance measuring device using a wheel (just like a digital odometer in a car). Can I find a chip with sensors(I am sure sensors will be attached to a wheel) that outputs distance in a digital format so that it can be stored in a memory? DigiRoller II Plus is a similar device but all I need is a circuit with output pins that outputs distance measured by a wheel (no LCDs or similar components attached attached). Does anyone know such circuit or chip?

RE: Digital distance measuring wheel

2
If you want the distance, you will have to count the pulses off the sensor on the wheel. Their are IC counters available. As far as a digital output for the distance. Is this the distance traveled? What type of digital signal, like 8 bits or communications?
I dont know that anyone IC will do what you want unless you use a microcontroller. This, to me, would be how I would make such an animal.

RE: Digital distance measuring wheel

What you need is some teeth somewhere mounted on your whhel. Then use an optical or a hall sensor to detect the pulses. Use a microcontroller to interpret the pulses or design the number of teeth numbers on your wheel in a way that for every 2 (or 4 or 6 or 16...) pulse you've got 1 meter. Then you can simply use a counter and ignore the first one (or 2 or 3 or 4..) bits and show the remaining on a counter.
You can search for "Group Arnold" company on the net to find out more about magnetic sensors used for measuring revoloution.


Cheers


You can live in your car, but you can't drive your House!

RE: Digital distance measuring wheel

Shark,
If you could use a large wheel (16") then you can use a off the shelf bike odometer. You just strap the magnet on the wheel and the electronics are  already made for you. for smaller wheels you can use a divide by circuit, up/down counter, flip flop or such.

RE: Digital distance measuring wheel

(OP)
Thanks for the replies guys. It is true that I need to measure the distance travelled by the wheel. Instead of just displaying the distance on LCD or counter, I need to store it in a memory so that I can download it to a PC. So, I don't know if I can use off-the shelf bike odometer for this purpose. I think i will have to use 8-bit or 16-bit digital data. The best choice I see is the use of microcontroller. I want to avoid it because measuring distance is just a small section of my project. Any more ideas?? Is there any pre-built chip or circuit in the market that measures distance counting wheel revolution and outputs the data in digital format (8-bit or 16-bit)?

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources