Someone gave me this rotary encoder breakout, but they unsoldered the SMT resistors for some other project. Now I don't have any SMT resistors on hand and can't justify buying a roll of them. So would it be all right if I just shorted those pads together?
I know that this rotary encoder came from sunfounder and that the resistors were 10K. Based on the PCB layout I can't tell if they were essential or not.
In the picture, above I drew where the traces go as far as I can go. The main reason I'm asking is they appear to connect across the traces.
Best Answer
What a terrible photo!
It's likely that the resistors were being used as pullups against the contact closures of the encoder. If that's the case, you need to replace them. Shorting them out would connect all of the contacts directly to the supply (and to each other).
Or you could simply leave them off, and provide the pullup function elsewhere in your system.