Sure, I'll give it a shot.

An optoisolator is basically like an LED and a phototransistor next to each
other.

This lets you communicate information optically so electrical noise doesn't
cross the circuit.  An example of using this would be to power a relay so
that the switching didn't affect the micro that was driving it.

HTH,

Alan G. Smith
+---------------------------------------------------------
| Alan G. Smith
| ags@poboxes.com
| http://www.innovatus.com/ags

-----Original Message-----
From: PHXSYS <PHXSYS@AOL.COM>
To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU <PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU>
Date: Monday, April 27, 1998 4:27 PM
Subject: optoisolator, simple explanation


>I was hoping someone could provide a simple explanation of an optoisolator
and
>an example of its practical use.
>
>
>Jon
>