>A few questions for you Phil,
>
>1) Is your optical encoder detented? (You can feel it click - not a
>smooth rotation)


The movement will be smooth. No clicks.

>2) Are the output from the photodetectors conditioned in any way (i.e.
>digital), or are they "raw"?

The signals are conditioned by a schmidt trigger to give it a bit of
hysteresis, before it is passed through the NAND gates to give up/down
instead of quadrature signals.

Phil