Triode
Well-Known Member
I work in a lab at the School of Freshwater Science at UW-Milwaukee. I'm pretty experienced with digital circuits, and I can get an op-amp to work, but I definitely am not an expert on analog circuits.
The issue at hand is that we use lots of sensors with a differential output, the span is usually between 20mV and 500mV, all of our systems take 0-5v or more rarely 0-10 or 0-12. Most of the researchers here don't really do electronics and they have to buy instrumentation amps made to their purpose, and the prices are ridiculous for what you get.
What would be great is if we could make a PCB that would take some fairly standard components, some specially chosen resistors, and give you a custom amp, then we could just make a batch order of 50 of them, and of all the common parts and op-amp chips, and whenever we need to amplify a sensor we could produce the amp in no time.
So It would be great if some of the more analog savvy people could tell me (a mechanical engineer and programmer) where to start. For example, what do I need to look for if I'm amplifying a differential signal in this voltage range, and my power supply is single 12v? I've tried to find existing designs that will work by reading about op-amps and looking at diagrams, but I don't know what's up to date, and what will work for my purposes.
Main power supply - 12v from a li-poly battery pack, may be regulated down
Sensor outputs - differential, some sweep 20mV, some as much as 500mV
Outputs - 0-5v in most cases, 0-10, 0-12 in some
Frequency of desired signal is usually low, under 100 Hz
The issue at hand is that we use lots of sensors with a differential output, the span is usually between 20mV and 500mV, all of our systems take 0-5v or more rarely 0-10 or 0-12. Most of the researchers here don't really do electronics and they have to buy instrumentation amps made to their purpose, and the prices are ridiculous for what you get.
What would be great is if we could make a PCB that would take some fairly standard components, some specially chosen resistors, and give you a custom amp, then we could just make a batch order of 50 of them, and of all the common parts and op-amp chips, and whenever we need to amplify a sensor we could produce the amp in no time.
So It would be great if some of the more analog savvy people could tell me (a mechanical engineer and programmer) where to start. For example, what do I need to look for if I'm amplifying a differential signal in this voltage range, and my power supply is single 12v? I've tried to find existing designs that will work by reading about op-amps and looking at diagrams, but I don't know what's up to date, and what will work for my purposes.
Main power supply - 12v from a li-poly battery pack, may be regulated down
Sensor outputs - differential, some sweep 20mV, some as much as 500mV
Outputs - 0-5v in most cases, 0-10, 0-12 in some
Frequency of desired signal is usually low, under 100 Hz
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