opto couplers

[Paul Perry]

At 04:02 AM 6/07/97 -0400, Mark AKA The Ninth Doctor wrote:
>As I said before I don't know much about electronics so I am not sure what an
>opto coupler is. I assume it is used to create isolation, through optical
>means, to protect sensitive equipment. Am I correct?

as I have said before, almost all purely electronic questions on this list
can be answered by The Art of Electronics, by Horowitz and Hill.
in this case there is a succint and complete section on optocouplers
starting p595 (2nd ed)

I draw everyones attention to the H11F series of linear optoisolators
which"can be used as an isolated variable resistor" and for the daring among
you  the ISO-100 from Burr-Brown "in which the LED couples to two matched
photodiodes; one is used in a feedback loop to linearize the coupled
response to the second photodiode"

.... dont expect that BB device would be cheap but the H11F is available &
reasonably cheap last time I looked.

paul perry melbourne australia (not florida)