The present invention relates to a shifter for controlling the transmission of a motor vehicle, the shifter comprising: an rotatably mounted actuation element; a sensor assembly comprising a first element having a plurality of binary sensors and a second element having a trigger device, wherein one of the first element and second element is rigidly coupled to the actuation element a control unit for determining an angular position of the actuation element based on an input signal from the sensor assembly; wherein the sensor assembly comprises at least three binary sensors, the binary sensors and the trigger device are arranged in such a way that each binary sensor corresponds to one trigger line of the trigger device, wherein said trigger line comprises a plurality of trigger elements that are arranged to be individually detectable by said binary sensor, and wherein the trigger elements are distributed along the trigger lines in such a way that at least one but not all of the binary sensors are able to detect the presence of a trigger element for each angular position of the actuation element. The invention also relates to a method for controlling the transmission of a motor vehicle by means of a shifter.