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Photoelectric sensors can't be connected in series.
Table of Contents
This article deals with the question if photoelectric sensors can be connected in series.
It is not possible to use the output of a photoelectric sensor as power supply for the next photoelectric sensor!!!
Reasons for this:
- Each photoelectric sensor has a short-circuit protection of the output. The standard of max. output current is 100mA.
- The power-up current peak is many times above the datasheet value of the current consumption - (temporary >150mA).
Behaviour of short circuit protection in this case:
- each time if the output of sensor 1 is switched ON
- the power consumption of sensor 2 (wich its very high power-up current peak of >100mA) will activate the short circuit protection of sensor 1
- output of sensor 1 changes to status OFF within some micro seconds,
- after a short time (within ms) the output changes into status ON again,
- and so on
Result: output of sensor 1 will oscillate and sensor 2 will never start.
This is valid for all photoelectric sensors with NPN or PNP output.
The same applies to competitor products as well.
It is not possible to use these sensors as power supply for further sensors.
It is not possible to use these sensors for designing a logical "AND" by lining further outputs of sensors in series. For this purpose, a sensor with test input is needed.
Keywords: photoelectric, serialconnection, connected in series
