Current sensor circuits

Hi All good people!
I want to know how can i sense the current of a battery or a solar panel etc through a micro controller. What are the techniques used for this purpose??
:razz: Regards!

mashal8050 said:

Hi All good people!
I want to know how can i sense the current of a battery or a solar panel etc through a micro controller. What are the techniques used for this purpose??
:razz: Regards!

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Yes you can use uC ADC to sense current. There is several ways for that, often are used current shunts or Hall sensors.



Best regards,
Peter

tpetar said:

Yes you can use uC ADC to sense current. There is several ways for that, often are used current shunts or Hall sensors.



Best regards,
Peter

Click to expand...

Hi
can you elaborate about current shunts

The simplest way is put a series resistor on the battery line and measure the voltage drop through the MCU ADC, Normally they use shunt resistor which will have low resistance and high watt, you can check for "wire wound resistor"(particularly the one coated with ceramic).

The other way is you can buy a current transducer (for eg:LTS-15-NP) which is more precise,safe and isolated type(power to signal isolation).
I hope this should clear your doubt.

SIVA.

mashal8050 said:

Hi
can you elaborate about current shunts

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Picture examples of professional current shunts :



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Ceramic power resistor with small resistance value used as current shunt (cheap variant) :

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Measuring voltage (voltage drop) accross resistor shunt we can get current which flows through circuit :

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That voltage drop is usually small and its in mV range, because of that OpAmp is used to adjust that small voltage to 0-5V range for microcontroller ADC input.



I suggest this to read:

DC METERING CIRCUITS
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Always when its possible use Hall sensor instead current shunt for current measuring.



Best regards,
Peter