Hi

I would like to make a digital (10 bit) to analog converter. Can someone please point me in the right direction?
Are there standard chips for this?

Thank you in advance.
a.

 

Possibly?, but it's fairly common to use an R2R ladder network, which is just a collection of resistors feeding a buffer. However, as 10 bit is 0.1% resolution you require 0.1% tolerance resistors (or better!).

The same applies to an IC DAC, it has to be made to better than 0.1% tolerance - this means they are not cheap!.

Do you actually require 10 bits?, what's it for?.

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Is the 10-bit resolution necessary? Can you use 8-bit converters?
If so, consider the ADC0804.
If you know PIC microcontrollers you may start with PIC16F88, that has 10-bit ADCs. The result of the conversion is often shifted by 2 or 3 positions because the less significant bits are comparable with noise... so consider 8-bit ADC first.

 

ohh...man..he is asking for DAC

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Exuse me! There are ICs by maxim... I don't know if they are suitable for the application

 

Look at:

http://www.ti.com

there are D/A that are 12 bits that I consider very low cost. These days, 10 bits is kind of obsolete, 12bits seem to be more prevalent. Even if you dont need 12 bits, you can get one for a song so who cares.

 

Hello this might help someone...

Here is a tutorial i wrote lately about how to build an R/2R DAC:
http://www.ikalogic.com/dac08.php

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If you mean ADCs, then there are several available like the 12 Bit, 8 channel MCP3208 from Microchip, and also the 4 channel MCP3204. These are SPI based and are quite fast, and can be configured using any standard MCU.

thanks
arunb

 

The ADC0804 is for Analogue-to-Digital conversion, not Digital-to-Analogue which seems to have been asked for in the question. However, if this chip is to be considered then I can offer the following advice:

The ADC0804 is a good little ADC chip which works reliably, however you MUST take the time to read the datasheet if you've any hope of getting it to work. It's designed to be interfaced to a Microprocessor so it requires the control lines to be given the right high/low signals before it'll sample and display the information. It's not difficult to arrange that these control lines function properly without a microprocessor, but that's why you'll want to read the datasheet first

Brian