user75377: I built a robotic arm, the problem is I want to rotate the base more than once in order to complete a job, so I figured out I could use multi turn potentiometer.
The problem I am facing is the potentiometer is burning without any reason.
I have a ton of burnt ones with me.
Sometimes it is caused by soldering and sometimes the shaft testing rotates the potentiometer beyond its limits.
While I could get the values precisely.
I am trying to avoid the pain of buying more.
My question is if I can use incremental encoder, the electricity in my country is not that stable and I don't want to lose the values accumulated by the arduino.
So does the encoder remembers the values or rotation or it starts afresh?

user4143: Yes, you can use a rotary encoder. However, there are two kinds of rotoary encoder: absolute, and relative. Relative encoders are the small common ones you find being used for things like volume controls. They only give you "It moved clockwise x steps" kind of information, which is not ideal for your usage. What you need is an absolute rotary encoder. This is a far more complex device and is often used on the shaft of motors to give the current angle the motor is at. These usually use a Gray code to represent an absolute angle at a specific resolution (choose the resolution to meet your requirements) and will tell you (within that level of resolution) the exact angle your robot arm is at. You can rotate it as many times as you like and it will always give you the current angle (note: it can't tell you how many revolutions it's made, that is down to you to count, should you actually need to).

75377: <p>I built a robotic arm, the problem is I want to rotate the base more than once in order to complete a job, so I figured out I could use multi turn potentiometer.
The problem I am facing is the potentiometer is burning without any reason.
I have a ton of burnt ones with me.
Sometimes it is caused by soldering and sometimes the shaft testing rotates the potentiometer beyond its limits.
While I could get the values precisely.
I am trying to avoid the pain of buying more.</p>
<p>My question is if I can use incremental encoder, the electricity in my country is not that stable and I don't want to lose the values accumulated by the arduino.
So does the encoder remembers the values or rotation or it starts afresh?</p>
 4143: <p>Yes, you can use a rotary encoder. However, there are two kinds of rotoary encoder: absolute, and relative. Relative encoders are the small common ones you find being used for things like volume controls. They only give you &quot;It moved clockwise x steps&quot; kind of information, which is not ideal for your usage. What you need is an <em>absolute</em> rotary encoder. This is a far more complex device and is often used on the shaft of motors to give the current angle the motor is at. These usually use a <em>Gray code</em> to represent an absolute angle at a specific resolution (choose the resolution to meet your requirements) and will tell you (within that level of resolution) the exact angle your robot arm is at. You can rotate it as many times as you like and it will always give you the current angle (note: it can't tell you how many revolutions it's made, that is down to you to count, should you actually need to).</p>
