Oh, I would have thought it was optically counting the holes through the tape. I assumed that is why the base is so thick that the hook at the end of the tape won't grab anything.
Dale Leavens, Cochrane Ontario Canada [EMAIL PROTECTED] Skype DaleLeavens Come and meet Aurora, Nakita and Nanook at our polar bear habitat. ----- Original Message ----- From: Tom Fowle To: blindhandyman@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2007 2:27 PM Subject: Re: [BlindHandyMan] Talking tape measures The cobolt unit has a tape with a holes that run through a sprocketed wheel inside the box. This, presumably, turns a digital shaft encoder that tells the microprocessor how many counts it's moved. These encoders can count several hundred counts per revolution of a shaft, so accuracy isn't a big deal. usually there is not a direct way for the encoder to know it's precise position except by counting from zero, so there is probably some other means of telling when the tape is actually all the way in, thus the complaint,"tape is not in." which is not always reliable. I don't immediately know why the cobolt unit seems to be flaky, unless the zero detection is bad. I've seen other digital tapes without speech and they used wnritely different position detection systems which we couldn't figure out. I've written to both Cobolt and other manufactureres of digital tapes wanting to help them produce a better unit for free consulting, and, like always happens, gotten no response at all. I'm sure they think, well we're selling them, they must be fine. It's fowle's first rule of capitalism, it doesn't matter if it works, it only matters if they can sell it. Tom [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
