What’s Programmable in Reflective Optical Sensors?

At Sensors Expo 2019, Sergey Komarov, a field application engineer for Sensors and Specialist Components at TT Electronics discusses the capabilities of his company’s OPB9000, a programmable surface mount device (SMD) reflective optical sensor. The sensor does not require additional peripheral circuitry such as op-amps, data converters or comparators, since all analog signal conditioning is integrated in the IC.

The new generation of sensors has an LED and photocell mounted on small printed circuit board (PCB). The reflective sensor is programmable with temperature compensation so it senses its own environment and adjusts the LED to compensate for the temperature variation. It is also programmable to different types of materials that it senses. Factory calibrated to a white card at a 12-mm distance for plug and play detection, the OPB9000 can be re-calibrated in a few milliseconds with a single command for specific application requirements.

Operating at a temperature range from -40°C to + 85°C in its 4.0-mm x 2.2mm x 1.46mm package, the sensor can detect various types of media with as little as a 30% change in reflectivity.

The Photologic V Reflective Sensor Evaluation Kit is available to It connects to a laptop computer to program the sensor using a graphical user interface (GUI) installed from a USB drive. The kit includes two sensors (daughterboards), the USB flash drive, a mainboard, a 4-pin extension cable and a USB cable to evaluate the photologic sensor.  A calibration switch on the mainboards allows the user to auto calibrate the sensor if the application is not running.