DUINOMITE – MEASURING TEMPERATURE II (LM335Z)

Today I decided to try another schematic for measurement of the temperature this time with LM335Z low cost sensor.

LM335Z have 0V at absolute zero temperature i.e. -273.2C and it’s output increase with 10mV/C so at room temperature the sensor will output about 2.73V

to measure this temperature with Duinomite is piece of cake:

10 SETPIN 1,1  ’setup PIN(1) as analog input

20 PRINT “ROOM TEMPERATURE IS”;PIN(1)*100-273

the problem is that PIC32 Analog input can’t take more than 3.3V on it’s ADC, so maximal temperature measured will be 57C well this still is enough for some application, but why not measure the complete temperature range -40C+100C ? (if you use LM135 the range will be -55+150C)

to do this we have to add resistor ladder which to divide the output voltage, TassyJim uses 18K/27K in his project posted at TheBackShed forum, and I found his 0.6 round divider as nice so decided to use same values.

the schematic if used for industrial applications should have some protection diodes and resistors like on this picture:

Image

but for the experiment I just used R1, R2, R3 and wired them to DuinoMite-Mini with jumper cables:

Image

then  I wrote this simple code:

10 SETPIN 1,1

20 PRINT “ROOM TEMPERATURE IS: “; PIN(1)*166.7-273

RUN

ROOM TEMPERATURE IS: 24.5645

it’s really not so hot in my office so I start thining what is wrong and I found it – I used 5% resistors as I had no preciese resistors so the voltage divider was not exactly 0.6 but something else and was mixing my result, no problem I took preciese ohm meter and measured R2 and R3 the values are:

R2 = 17 860 ohm

R3 = 26 600 ohm

aha so the voltage divider is 0.59829! and the coefficient I have to use in the formula is 100/0.59829 = 167.1

I corrected the formula:

20 PRINT “ROOM TEMPERATURE IS: “; PIN(1)*167.1-273

RUN

ROOM TEMPERATURE IS: 23.6145

so with not preciese resistors I got preciese result because DM-BASIC have no problems to work multiply real numbers 

 

so the complete code to measure temperature in -40C+100C with LM335Z fits in one line

PRINT “ROOM TEMPERATURE IS: “; PIN(1)*167.1-273

 

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6 thoughts on “DUINOMITE – MEASURING TEMPERATURE II (LM335Z)

  1. john says:

    For those who don’t know much electronics (so recognise resistors but not a lot else), please explain what the diode-like devices are and why each would be needed in an industrial (noisy) environment.

    • OLIMEX Ltd says:

      D1 is the sensor it may be connected with long cable which to pass through transformers, motors, high voltage cables etc which to inducted voltage in the cable and to be applied to the Analog input, these inducted noises can be as high as hundreds of volts for short period of time, and to damage the PIC processor
      D2 is Zenner diode which do not allow inducted voltage to go over 5V
      D3 and D4 protect Analog input if the voltage on this line go over 5.3 or under -0.3V these diodes will pass through to Vcc or ground
      As 5V is not safe voltage for the ADC input R4 limits the input current to safe range
      hope this explanation didn’t confused you further :) but this is very basic electronics and you can find a book and read more

  2. Skippy says:

    This looks great. I’ll go put in these two extra resistors in and revise my formula. Thank you for the example. I can calculate every necessary step by myself now.

  3. Skippy says:

    Does this mean that the value of R1 is not important to the formula?

    • OLIMEX Ltd says:

      R1 value is important of course but do not influence the temperature measurement formula directly
      R1 value is to restrict the current through the sensor, it’s value depends on what voltage you will feed, in case of 5V 1.5K is OK
      if you use too small value the current which flows through the sensor may heat it up and to bias the measurements, all this is described in the LM335 datasheet

  4. Keith@ says:

    The BAT54 schottky diodes in the schematic appear to be orientated to allow the use of a single BAT54S smd.

    datasheet … http://www.nxp.com/documents/data_sheet/BAT54_SERIES.pdf

    cool !

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