Building an Inverted Pendulum System The Ups and Downs of Defying Gravity…

The LEDs came in today.  I soldered a resistor onto the positive lead of each LED so they would work properly with a 5 V power supply.  I connected each LED and tried waving it in front of the encoder sensor.  All of the LEDs managed to make the digital signal flicker, so it looks promising.  The problem is that none of them was consistent.  I couldn’t get a good steady signal on both A and B channels at the same time.  I suspect if I drilled a hole in the side of the encoder where the old LED is, I could put a new LED in the same spot and it might work.  The light would have space to spread out and go through the lens and be focused on the sensor.  Drilling through the side of the encoder would be a little risky, though.  I am leaning towards just getting a new encoder if I can get one at a reasonable price.  Most of the ones on ebay are priced higher than I am willing to pay.