I spent a full day trying to get serial mode working on the WW-12s, with no luck. I am fairly experienced with the Arduino.

I have an Arduino Duemilanove and the new WW-12 encoders. Is it possible to use the encoders in serial mode with SoftwareSerial or another serial port library, so that I can retain the use of Serial for debugging?

Having tried and failed to get the encoders working with my own code, I looked at the Wheel Commander examples and read about the serial format there. Am I supposed to use that complex format with the WW-12? In the manual for WW-12 it seemed to be a simpler version, one that would work with a basic read/write.

Sorry you're having trouble. I've been out of town and not very connected or I would have replied sooner.

Could you please post your code, and describe how you have wired the encoders to your Arduino, including how you are powering them and how every pin of the WW-12s are connected or not connected as the case may be.

By the way, I've written an Arduino library and example for the WheelWatcher tonight. I'll test and debug it and hopefully post it tomorrow if possible.

Thanks, Pete! I will wait for your library...I overwrote my old code and decided to go with Sign/Magnitude mode for now.

Are there any advantages to using Serial mode, other than the microprocessor does not tie up its interrupts? Does the WW-12 processor do some signal cleaning or something else to make counts more accurate than Sign/Magnitude?

No, no advantages other than just a different way to get information from it; the accuracy is the same.