The encoder is my very favorite part of the robot. I've written a page about how it works in detail: https://github.com/HaddingtonDynamics/Dexter/wiki/Encoders

The encoder is my very favorite part of the robot. I've written a page about how it works in detail: https://github.com/HaddingtonDynamics/Dexter/wiki/Encoders https://github.com/HaddingtonDynamics/Dexter/wiki/Encoders In summary, it's a hybrid of digital and analog. To the standard quadrature encoder slit counter, we add sensing of the light levels as each slit covers or obscures the phototector. So we get e.g. 200 slits times 8096 light levels inside each slit equals over a million positions. It's so much data that we need an FPGA to process it fast enough. You can breath on the arm and it can sense it. There is a constant battle between writing for sales/investment and writing for technical disclosure. Sometimes we get some chocolate in the peanut butter. It's certainly not phony, and I'm happy to answer any questions that anyone has about the real technical abilities. The $2,999 price was for the Dexter 1 which was available at the time the article was written. The current generation is the Dexter HD which is more capable, much easier to build, and (as you noticed) more expensive.