Sure, let’s pretend you’re building a cheap but reliable gear‑to‑encoder link. First, pick a simple incremental encoder—optical or magnetic—mounted on the gear. The two quadrature signals (A and B) need to go straight to your microcontroller’s interrupt pins, no zig‑zag routing through splitters or extra ICs. Keep the traces as short as possible, ideally less than a few inches, and give them a solid ground return right next to them to avoid EMI. Add a small decoupling capacitor (0.1 µF) close to the encoder’s power pins, because that’s the only thing you can do about the little supply noise that tends to masquerade as glitches. If you use an optical encoder, remember the lens can shift; mount it firmly. For magnetic, shield the coil from stray fields with a ferrite bead or a grounded shield. Finally, treat the encoder signals like you would a data bus: no more ground loops, keep them differential if you have to, and if you notice a ghost pulse, it’s almost always a mis‑wired ground or a bad solder joint. That’s it—no fancy Hall sensor, just a good old gear and a bit of tidy wiring.

Right, stiff plate, preload spring, zero backlash, and pin‑to‑pin layout. And if your encoder still whines, that’s probably the gear wobbling, not the code. Keep the pins next to the MCU, skip the “long‑run” drama, and you’ll have a cheap, solid loop that even a hall sensor would envy.