#Sensor

Sensors & Hardware September 4, 2026

How Rotary Encoders Work — Optical and Magnetic

We compare the two operating principles behind the rotary encoder — optical, which reads position by interrupting light, and magnetic, which reads the direction of a magnetic field — from a motor's shaft angle and speed sensor.

Fundamentals · 13 min Sensors & Hardware September 3, 2026

How Event Cameras (DVS) Work and Key Products — Prophesee, iniVation

Unlike conventional cameras that keep capturing frames (still images) at fixed intervals, event cameras (Dynamic Vision Sensor, DVS) have each pixel independently report only the instant its brightness changes, at microsecond resolution. We trace the real chips — Prophesee Metavision, iniVation DVXplorer/DAVIS, Samsung DVS-Gen4 — the neuromorphic-engineering lineage from 1988's silicon retina research to iniVation's 2024 acquisition, the stereo-event-camera autonomous-driving dataset DSEC, and SLAM research running onboard UAVs.

Fundamentals · 13 min Sensors & Hardware August 4, 2026

How Depth Cameras Work and Key Products — RealSense, Kinect, Orbbec

Active stereo projects a pattern with an infrared emitter and does stereo matching; structured light reads depth from how a known pattern distorts; time-of-flight reads distance directly from a phase shift — three coexisting approaches to depth cameras. We look at the principles behind each and real examples from the Intel RealSense D435i, Microsoft Kinect, Orbbec Femto Bolt, and iPhone TrueDepth, and trace how Israeli startup PrimeSense's technology gave birth to Kinect, got acquired by Apple, and was reborn as Face ID.

Fundamentals · 8 min Sensors & Hardware July 29, 2026

How Stereo Cameras Work and Key Products — ZED 2i, Subaru EyeSight

A stereo camera triangulates distance from the disparity between two lenses, solving the absolute-scale problem that fundamentally limits monocular cameras. We look at real specs from the Stereolabs ZED 2i, Luxonis OAK-D, and e-con Systems TARA, and trace the baseline-length tradeoff through the evolution of Subaru's EyeSight, which has shipped on over 5 million vehicles since 2008 — plus the story of how EyeSight's creator left Subaru to found his own stereo-vision startup.

Fundamentals · 8 min Sensors & Hardware July 23, 2026

How Monocular Cameras Work and Key Products — Mobileye, Tesla, Continental

A monocular camera reads lane lines, signs, and obstacles through a single lens, gaining low cost and a small footprint at the price of a fundamental limitation — a single image alone cannot fix absolute distance. We look at real examples from Mobileye EyeQ6L, Tesla HW4, Continental MFC500, and comma.ai to see how each works around that constraint, and trace how a Hebrew University lab became Mobileye and was acquired by Intel for over $15 billion, plus Tesla's 2021 decision to "delete" radar from Tesla Vision.

Fundamentals · 8 min Sensors & Hardware July 19, 2026

How LiDAR Works and Key Products — Livox, Velodyne, Hesai

LiDAR measures distance from the round-trip time of light, from the rotating Velodyne Puck to the non-rotating Livox Mid-360S that drove costs down, to the Chinese players Hesai and RoboSense. We compare real specs from actual products in production — and trace the industry's real backstory, from the DARPA Grand Challenge to the DJI spinoff to the collapse of Volvo's deal with Luminar.

Fundamentals · 10 min