UBITO, the “Wiegand Company”, has announced its new UBIREV rotation sensor. This modular sensor makes it simple for machinery designers to add reliable, battery-free multiturn rotation counting capability to their equipment. Applications include rotary encoders, fluid flow meters and other machinery where it is important to monitor the number of shaft revolutions.

The UBIREV sensor is based on UBITO’s latest Wiegand technology. While earlier Wiegand-based rotation counting systems required that the sensor be positioned along the axis of the host device’s rotating shaft, the new UBIREV sensors are designed to be installed beside the shaft. The moving magnetic field that activates the Wiegand sensor is created by a ring-shaped multipole magnet mounted on the shaft. This reduces development time by giving designers more flexibility when determining the layout of new devices or when adding multiturn capabilities to an existing design. With no mechanical contact between the magnet and sensor, wear is eliminated and the service life of the sensor is virtually unlimited.

The UBIREV modular rotation sensor includes an UBIPULS Wiegand sensor and an UBICYCL controller chip, both mounted on a printed circuit board. A collar-shaped multipole magnet designed to be mounted on the host machine’s rotating shaft completes the set. The counter in the controller chip has a 16-bit (65,536 rotations) measurement range. Communications are based on widely-used SPI protocols.

A special feature of the UBICYCL chip is that it is energy autonomous, obtaining the energy it needs to record rotations from current pulses generated by the Wiegand sensor. Each complete shaft rotation is detected and recorded – even if the motion occurs when no system power is available. This eliminates the need for backup batteries and the maintenance overhead associated with testing, replacing and disposing of these batteries.