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Hall Sensors: How Do They Work?


Son of Samurai

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Whether you were aware of them or not, Hall effect sensors are everywhere. Any time you see a motor on an appliance with any kind of RPM feedback or speed signal, there's a Hall sensor on that motor. As with any ubiquitous appliance technology, it's important for us techs to know how they work. A deeper understanding of the technology means a deeper understanding of how to troubleshoot it.

So: what is a Hall sensor, and how does it work? These are semiconductor devices, so as with most electronics, it's not important to get too far into the weeds. We just want a functional understanding of them as far as it affects our troubleshooting. To that end, here's a little gif to show you a Hall sensor in action:

Hall_sensor_tach.gif

Those red discs are permanent magnets -- something similar to the kind you might use to stick something to your refrigerator. The blue box is the actual Hall sensor. Notice how, every time the spinning white disc (assume that's the rotor of a motor) takes a magnet past the Hall sensor, the sensor lights up. This is all Hall sensors do. They detect the proximity of a magnet. It's that simple.

How doe they do this? By using an electromagnetic principle known as the Hall effect -- hence whey they are properly called Hall effect sensors. The Hall effect states that, if you have a current flowing through a conductor, and you then apply a magnetic field to that conductor, it will induce a voltage difference across that conductor perpendicular to the current flow. This induced voltage difference is often called the Hall voltage.

Here's an image demonstrating the Hall effect in action in a Hall sensor.

electromagnetism-mag26.gif

Again, not important that you completely wrap your head around everything that's going on inside one of these sensors. What's important is that you understand what inputs a Hall sensor needs and what it outputs.

Below is what a Hall sensor looks like physically. Note that it has three terminals, and in this picture, each terminal is labeled with what that terminal carries.

hall_sensor.png

Super simple -- you've just got a 5 VDC power supply, a DC ground, and then the signal, which is just that induced DC voltage -- the Hall voltage -- from the magnet that we talked about before. The 5 VDC and the DC ground are there to produce the constant current through the sensor, across which the Hall voltage is induced.

All three of these wires would connect back to a control board. This board supplies the DC voltage and ground, and it receives the sensor's signal as an input. The logic on the board then interprets that signal to make calculations about whether the motor is running and how quickly it is turning.

So now that you know how they work, how do you test a Hall sensor? It's actually very simple, and you might have guessed at this point. All you need to do is manually spin the motor that the sensor is attached to while you have your voltmeter measuring the signal line wrt DC ground. If you see some fluctuating voltage appear while the motor is spinning, you know that the sensor is doing its job.

And that's all there is to it! Very simple, but very useful and versatile devices. We see them all over the place, and now you know what's going on inside that little black semiconductor.

Want to really understand the technologies present in all appliances and learn how to apply that knowledge to your appliance troubleshooting for maximum profits? Click here to check out our online Core Appliance Repair Training course over at the Master Samurai Tech Academy.

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Not all of them run off 5v though

cant ever recall needing to check voltage on one

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  • Team Samurai
Son of Samurai

Posted

8 hours ago, J5* said:

Not all of them run off 5v though

Of course -- specifics like that are always up to the specific implementation. But whether it's 5, 9, or 12 VDC, the underlying principle is the same. Since it's a semiconductor device, it will operate on a small DC voltage.

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  • Team Samurai
Samurai Appliance Repair Man

Posted

14 hours ago, J5* said:

cant ever recall needing to check voltage on one

You must not work on many LGs or Samsung’s. The hand spin test is an easy way to check the hall sensor. LG and Samsung both explicitly train on this. The same technique works on any hall sensor in other makes because they all work the same way. 

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4 hours ago, Samurai Appliance Repair Man said:

You must not work on many LGs or Samsung’s.

No im not that insane or desperate just yet 😂 

im curious with this testing what percentage of failures between the sensor and the board or wiring issues ?

have you found this to be common to certain models ?
 

most sensor issues i have had on products have usually been corrosion at the plug onto the sensor 99% of the time 

i have seen sensor failures of late that are the sensor and seem to appear to be possibly a batch issue as these are appearing from a specific age range of product 

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Samurai Appliance Repair Man

Posted

It’s usually the wiring. The hall sensor itself is very reliable. Rather than ohm the harness, which is not a reliable test, spinning the drum and measuring for voltage at the board reliably tests both the sensor and the harness under load, more closely simulating real-use conditions. 

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Good stuff!

Taught so simple even a Kaveman can understand it.

 

 

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What would the error or failure symptom be as a result of a failed hall sensor/wiring problem?

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Son of Samurai

Posted

1 hour ago, vunger1 said:

What would the error or failure symptom be as a result of a failed hall sensor/wiring problem?

Depends on how the sensor is implemented, but usually the control will throw an error and refuse to run the motor if it doesn't sense a signal from the Hall sensor. Since the Hall sensor is the way the control sees if the motor is spinning, it will think that the motor isn't running.

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fillthebarman

Posted

I recently had a call for a samsung front load washer that would not spin out.  Of course it was on a home made built shelf about a foot high with dryer next to it with no room on either side.  We removed the dryer  and I could carefully get to the back of the washer and I remove the connector to the hall sensor and replaced and it started working. Corroded connection.  Rough old veteran in a rough old house gave me a hug.  Ha!

Good Info!  Thanks!

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