PICtail Plus Daughter Board Microchip AC164135
The Thermal/Linear Intelligent Sensor PICtail Plus Daughter Board provides the signal conditioning circuits to interface thermal and linear sensor signals to a dsPIC Digital Signal Controller or a PIC24H microcontroller.
Detailed Description
The Thermal/Linear Intelligent Sensor PICtail Plus Daughter Board is used with either the Explorer 16 Development Board or the 16-bit 28-pin Starter Development Board to demonstrate the acquisition, analog-to-digital conversion (dsPIC DSC or PIC24H devices) and signal processing of typical sensor signals using the architectural and peripheral features of the devices. The Daughter Board is intended to support the development of intelligent sensor processing applications using Microchip's 16-bit DSC and MCU device families.
The Daughter Board fits into the expansion slot on the Explorer 16 Development Board and interfaces between an external sensor and the dsPIC33F or PIC24H device on the Explorer 16 Development Board. The Daughter Board is intended to support the development of intelligent sensor processing applications using Microchip's 16-bit DSC and MCU device families.
Alternately, the Daughter Board may be plugged into the pin header on the 16-bit 28-pin Starter Development Board using connector J2 (refer to Figure 2-1 in
Chapter 2. “Hardware” for the location of this connector).The differential output signals from the thermocouple (not provided with the Daughter Board) are amplified, passed through an anti-aliasing filter and routed to the Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) module on the dsPIC33F or PIC24H device for software processing. A TC1047A temperature sensor IC is also provided on the board. The output of this temperature sensor is passed through another anti-aliasing filter and routed to the ADC.
The Daughter Board also provides a generic linear signal interface to which any single-ended sensor output (or even an artificially synthesized signal) can be supplied. Just like the thermocouple and TC1047A output signals, this linear signal is conditioned using an anti-aliasing filter, but it is also level-shifted in order to allow bipolar sensor signals to be sampled by the unipolar ADC on the dsPIC33F or PIC24H device.The Explorer 16 Development Board (or 16-bit 28-pin Starter Development Board) supplies power to the Daughter Board.
