Wenglor Distance Sensors (Part- I: OPT2012 to OPT2014 Quick Start) from AutomationDirect

These three sensors are identical except the ’12 has a 6.2 meter range while the 13 and 14 have a 10 meter range, and the difference between these two is the 13 has an extra output, A2, a dedicated laser enable and dedicated analog output pins. The 12 and 14 have all the same functionality as the 13 – you can configure pin A1 to be the analog output and pin A3 to be the laser enable for example. So if your needs are simple, either of those will do everything the 13 does, you just have fewer pins to do it with. Setting up these sensors up is pretty easy, once you get the hang of using the menus. This chart from the on-line manual shows you all of the possible commands. In this video we’ll do all the simple ones. These guys right here require a little more explanation so we’ll cover those in separate videos. Here we go … If you are re-configuring an existing unit, you’ll probably want to get it back to factory default just so you have a known starting point. Just press any of the three buttons to get into the menus, and hit the up or down arrows until you see the word RESET. Press the right arrow to go down into that menu and then you press the R button to reset the sensor to factory default. There’s a list of all the default settings on page 11 of the user manual. The factory reset is great except for one thing … the default language on the unit I’m using is GERMAN. And since I don’t speak German, the menus are difficult to figure out. Well, here’s a little tip: Press any button to get into the menus – you can see all the German menus. Well, we want to change the language to English, but since the menu is in German there is no “Language” option – right? But if I scroll through these options, there’s one call Sprache. Have you ever heard the phrase “Sprechen ze Duesche?” meaning “Do you speak German? Well, that’s this Sprache right here. We press the right arrow and scroll down to English, then press the right arrow to accept that, and then the back arrow to exit. We can either wait for the sensor to revert to RUN mode, or just scroll down to RUN and hit the right arrow. And that’s pretty much how the menus work. We can do things like set the sample rate, turn the laser beam on or off, etc. just by following these little arrows. Let’s go through these one by one and see what they do. This Run Mode is interesting. Here you can change the run mode display between analog and digital. This run option right here gives you a quick way to get back to RUN mode so you can see the result. So let’s see, in the digital mode we see the distance readout and the status of the pins, along with this bar graph indicating where we are in the range. In the analog mode, we see the actual current or voltage at the output pin. The display menu lets you flip the display upside down – this gives you flexibility in how you mount the sensor. You can also set the default intensity AND you can choose between energy saver and screen saver modes. Energy saver turns the display off if you are in run mode and there is no button activity for about one minute. Screen saver mode reduces the intensity of the display and inverts the display once a minute to help extend the life of the screen. Let’s speed up the video here so you can see what that looks like, remember - this actually happens once a minute. Again, pressing any button brings it back to the normal display. The Info screen shows you the current software version, part number, etc. The laser menu lets you manually force the laser light on or off. That way if you are working on the system - and you don’t want the laser light bouncing all over the place - you can just force it to be off. The password screen lets you create a password – which can be any number from 0 to 9999 and then you enable the password here. If the sensor looses power, then you won’t be able to access the menus without knowing the password. This Measure Rate menu item is the sample rate. Note that reducing the sample rate improves the resolution for this sensor, so if resolution is important to you, chose the lowest sample rate you can for your application. And finally, the analog menu is where you choose current or voltage output and set – or “teach” – the min and max distances. To set new ones, just move the target to the max distance and press this upper button – in this case the 10 Volt output – that would say 20ma if we had choses a current output of course –then move the object to the nearest distance and hit the bottom button to lock in the distance at which you get 0 volts – or 4 milli-amps of current if you chose that mode. Easy. To get back to run mode at any time you can either wait 60 seconds, or scroll down to RUN and hit that button. Well, that should be enough to get you started with these distance sensors from Wenglor. Check out the next video to learn how to configure those inputs and output pins. And don’t forget – Automation Directs tech support is always FREE and you will talk to a real live person here in the US within minutes. Got a question? During business hours you can call, e-mail, or even do on-line chat. AutomationDirect offers Wenglor distance measuring sensors from 80 micro meters all the way out to 100 meters to cover all of your distance measuring needs.