Baffled by Honeywell proximity sensor

larwe_at_larwe.com
Date: 12/31/04 

Date: 30 Dec 2004 18:57:50 -0800

I've been given a sample Honeywell capacitative proximity sensor by a
client. He wants me to build a small micro-based project to interface
with it. The sensor is shipped in a bag labeled "992AA12AN-A2", and the
documentation for "992 series" sensors consists of four letter-sized
sides, most of which are multilingual translations of warnings and
mechanical specs. The electrical documentation supplied with this
sensor is a quarter-page and not very meaningful to me. I've
photographed it at http://www.larwe.com/honey.jpg - sorry for the nasty
photo, my scanner is being recalcitrant.

The device has a blue wire, a brown wire and a black wire. Looking at
those diagrams - I presume they relate to different versions of the
sensor - I assume that the blue wire is supposed to be +ve, the brown
is -ve, and the black is output. But when I connect a 10VDC supply and
a scope, all I see on the output is 60Hz hum. I added a 500 ohm
resistor between the "output" line and ground, and still all I get is
hum. The device also doesn't seem to be drawing any appreciable
current.

The only info I can find on the web is a bunch of people offering to
sell me the data***, and one company saying that they have stopped
selling it and now sell someone else's sensor.
Does anyone know how these devices are supposed to work?

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