Electronic – Wiring optical incremental encoder

You could use the Matlab Data Acquisition Toolbox, if you have access to that.

Alternately, a digital storage oscilloscope may be about to capture data in some kind of spreadsheet format that you could easily import into Matlab.

You will need to set the sampling rate high enough to avoid aliasing. For a conventional rotary encoder, that the critical time is about 0.5 ms, so you need to sample at 0.25 ms or less (4000 Hz). You'll need to ensure your data capture system is properly configured to capture these events. For your optical encoder, the sample time will be related to the maximum speed you are trying to capture and the number of positions in the encoder.

This is a simple optointerruptor. One side is an IR LED and the other side is a single photodiode or phototransistor. It will detect the presence or absence of an object in the slot. In this case, it will detect the slots in the wheel. You'll need to figure out which side is which. I presume the side with the red wire is the LED. You'll need to power it through a decent current limiting resistor, try 330 ohms if you want to use 5 volts. The detector on the other side is probably a phototransistor. One lead should be grounded and the other one connected to power with a pull up resistor, 1k to 10k. You may have to experiment with the polarity.