In the animated example below, you can see how an encoder works. Inside the encoder we have some copper pads (brown color in the animation). These are connected to GND. Then we have two pins, clock and data, with a pullup to 5V. In this way, when the pin is in open circuit, it will be "HIGH" or 5V. While rotationg, these two pins will touch the copper pads, pulling the output to GND since the pads are directy connected to GND. So, each time we touch a copper pad, we have a "LOW" pulse. By counting these pulses, we can count steps. If we detect 10 pulses for example, then the encoder jumped 10 copper pads. By knowing how many pads (steps )the encoder has, we can calculate the angle of rotation.

angle (in degrees) = (360º / total steps) * counted steps

But! at the same time, using both pins we can also detect the direction of rotation. In the example below, as you can see both pins start with an output of 5V since non is touching the copper pads. If we rotate to the right, then the clock pin will be the first one to drop to GND. If we rotate to the left, the data pin will be the first one to drop to GND. So, just by detecting which pin will change its level first, we can detect the direction of rotation. Doing this with the Arduino is very simple.

• 1 x Arduino UNO/NANO : LINK eBay
• 1 x Encoder: LINK eBay
• Or 1 x Encoder Module: LINK eBay
• 1 x i2c LCD 16x2: LINK eBay or use serial monitor

Ok, as you can see below, we have connected the encoder data and clock pins to the Arduino on D8 adn D9. The encoder also has a push button inside taht we could use, so I've connected that to D10. We need pullups for each pin, but instead of adding an external resistor, we can define the pin in the ARduino code as INPUT_PULLUP, and that will do the job. Connect GND to the encoder GND pin.

This example doesn't need any library nor the LCD screen. Just print the result on the serial monitor. Make connections as above, connect the USB to the Arduino and then upload the code. Open serial monitor at 9600 bauds and start rotating the encoder and pusing the button to test it. The counter value will increase and decrease. If you want to create a menu, just put limits to the counter and depending on that counter value, decide the position in the menu. Download the .zip code from below or just copy+paste. Read all coments in the code to understand each step.

Ok, the problem with the code above is that if you make any other process in the void loop that would create any sort of delay, well you migh jump over some steps. If a step occurred while the code is doing another process such as, I don't know, reading an analog input, we might not detect that step and that will look very bad. To solve this problem, we use interruptions. So we make pins D8 and D9 to be able to create an interruption each time their digital value changes. So we can pause the code from any process it was doing, read the clock and data values, and resume the code. Read details in the code.

As you can see in the code below, all we do in the void loop is to check if the counter value cahnged. If yes, we print the new value. Now we can do any other process in the void loop since the counter value will change in the interruption any time we detect a new state cahnge on Data or Clock.

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