Patent ID: 7272893

Claim:
An electronic measuring device comprising: a housing; an axle mounted to the housing and coupled to an encoder disk that includes a plurality of circumferentially spaced apart opaque sections with translucent sections disposed between the opaque sections; an emitter and a receiver mounted on opposite sides of the encoder disk; at least one wheel mounted on the axle to engage and roll on a surface; a controller linked to the emitter and receiver that increments a counter in response to the opaque sections and translucent sections of the encoder disk passing between the emitter and the receiver as the wheel rotates; at least one control button on the housing, the at least one control button connected to the controller, and a display linked to the controller, the display including a segment indicator; wherein the controller computes the distance traveled by the wheel along a surface based on the counter, wherein the controller divides the distance traveled by the wheel along the surface into a plurality of segments, and wherein the controller indicates a first segment being traversed by energizing the segment indicator on the display during a subsequent pass of the wheel along the first segment.