In switched reluctance motor(SRM) drive, it is necessary to synchronize the stator phase excitation with the rotor position. Therefore the rotor position information is an essential. Usually optical encoders or resolvers are used to provide the rotor position information. These sensors are expensive and are not suitable for high speed operation. In general, the accuracy of the switching angle is dependent upon the resolution of the encoder and the sampling period of the microprocessor. But the region of high speed, switching angles are fluctuated back and forth from the preset values, which are cause by the sampling period of the microprocessor. Therefore, the low cost linear encoder suitable for the practical and stable SRM drive is proposed and the control algorithm to provide the switching signals using the simple digital logic circuit is also presented in this paper. It is verified from the experiments that the proposed encoder and logic controller can be a powerful candidate for the practical low cost SRM drive.