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I2C EEPROM plus Temperature Sensor breakout board

Posted on February 26, 2013 by R-B 3 comments

This tiny breakout board carries Microchip’s 24LC512 EEPROM and MCP9802 temperature sensor devices, both of which support I2C protocol. This board can be used for both sensing the ambient temperature and storing it. The MCP9802 is a digital temperature sensor with an user-selectable resolution from 9 to 12 bit. It can measure temperature ranging from -55°C to +125°C and notifies the host microcontroller when the ambient temperature exceeds a user programmed set point through its ALERT output pin. This board allows you to store up to 32000 temperature samples when you use the sensor in high resolution mode (12-bit, 0.0625°C) with each sample stored as two bytes.

I2C EEPROM and Temperature sensor board

Humidity and temperature measurements with Sensirion’s SHT1x/SHT7x sensors (Part 2)

Posted on May 28, 2011 by R-B 11 comments

In Part 1 of this tutorial, we discussed about Sensirion’s SHT1x and SHT7x series of humidity sensors, their interface specifications, the communication protocol used for transferring data in and out of the sensor, and the equations to convert their digital outputs to actual physical quantities. These sensors are capable of measuring temperature along with relative humidity and provide outputs in fully-calibrated digital words. We will now see how a PIC microcontroller can be programmed to communicate with these sensors, read the temperature and relative humidity data, and display the information on a character LCD.

Circuit setup on breadboard

Humidity and temperature measurements with Sensirion’s SHT1x/SHT7x sensors (Part 1)

Posted on May 28, 2011 by R-B 5 comments

Temperature and relative humidity are two very important ambient parameters that are directly related to human comfort. Sometimes, you may be able to bear higher temperatures, if there is a lower relative humidity, such as in hot and dry desert-like environment. However, being in a humid place with not very high temperature may make you feel like melting. This is because if there is high relative humidity, sweat from our body will evaporate less into the air and we feel much hotter than the actual temperature. Humidifiers and dehumidifiers help to keep indoor humidity at a comfortable level. Today we will discuss about Sensirion’s SHT series of digital sensors, more specifically SHT11 and SHT75, which are capable of measuring both temperature and relative humidity and provide fully calibrated digital outputs. We will interface both the sensors to PIC18F2550 microcontroller and compare the two sets of measurements to see the consistency between the two sensors. This tutorial is divided into two parts. The first part will cover all the details regarding the sensors, including their specification, interface, and communication protocol. The second part will be more focussed on the circuit diagram, implementation of the communication protocol with PICMicro, and the results.

Relative humidity and temperature measurements with SHT1x and SHT7x sensors

Calibrating a thermistor for temperature measurements

Posted on November 17, 2010 by R-B Leave a comment

A thermistor is a passive device that changes its resistance with temperature. If the temperature-resistance characteristic is known, it can be used as a temperature sensor by measuring the resistance, or more precisely, the voltage across it. Thermistors are classified in to two types: NTC (negative temperature coefficient) and PTC (positive temperature coefficient). A NTC thermistor decreases its resistance while the temperature rises, and a PTC does the opposite.

Although the datasheet of a thermistor describes the temperature-resistance relationship, the measurement based on that is not very accurate. Therefore, you may need to calibrate it against a more accurate sensor. This article describes about calibrating a 10K thermistor against a DS1621 temperature sensor, which is a very precise digital temperature sensor. With a series of readings from both the sensor, you can see if the relationship between the temperature and resistance of the thermistor is linear or not.
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