String Pots

[TonyNo]

Celesco has recently come out with "low-cost" string pots. They do sell direct and take credit cards. These are higher cost than a pot with a home-made mechanism, but could make for easy position-monitoring projects for most people. The longest version currently available is 50", so it rules out garage door monitoring.

http://www.celesco.com/promo/spseries.html

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

So you are saying you want to monitor your garage door with precision that a "true" linear potentiometer gives combined with an analog to digital converter???

I do this now with about $50 in parts (and my HA server).

Celesco has recently come out with "low-cost" string pots

What is their "low cost" price Tony?

 

[Guy Lavoie]

The longest version currently available is 50", so it rules out garage door monitoring.

You could still use it by looping a string around two pulleys (one being mounted on a long spring) and then having the string pot follow the movement of the spring mounted pulley. This would halve the door's travel, so you could monitor a 100" travel.

Look at the compound pulley:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulley

 

[TonyNo]

I got the quote: Single-piece quantities were $148; low for an off-the-shelf string pot.

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

What application(s) were you going to use these for?

 

[rocco]

What application(s) were you going to use these for?

I've always wanted to use them to attach to the counter-weights in double-hung windows. When they get down to $25, I will do it.