Limit switch

Using limit switches to control behavior

Limit switches are often used to control mechanisms on robots. While limit switches are simple to use, they only can sense a single position of a moving part. This makes them ideal for ensuring that movement doesn't exceed some limit but not so good at controlling the speed of the movement as it approaches the limit. For example, a rotational shoulder joint on a robot arm would best be controlled using a potentiometer or an absolute encoder, the limit switch could make sure that if the potentiometer ever failed, the limit switch would  stop the robot from going to far and causing damage.                                               

What values are provided by the limit switch

Limit switches can have "normally opened" or "normally closed" outputs. The usual way of wiring the switch is between a digital input signal connection and ground. The digital input has pull-up resistors that will make the input be high (1 value) when the switch is open, but when the switch closes the value goes to 0 since the input is now connected to ground. The switch shown here has both normally open and normally closed outputs.

It's possible that a limit switch might close then open again as a mechanism moves past the switch. If the closure is fast enough the program might not notice that the switch closed. An alternative method of catching the switch closing is use a Counter object. Since counters are implemented in hardware, it will be able to capture the closing of the fastest switches and increment it's count. Then the program can simply notice that the count has increased and take whatever steps are needed to do the operation.

Above is a subsystem that uses a counter to watch the limit switch and wait for the value to change. When it does, the counter will increment and that can be watched in a command.