From the course: Electronics Foundations: Basic Circuits

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Measure resistive sensors

Measure resistive sensors

From the course: Electronics Foundations: Basic Circuits

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Measure resistive sensors

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- [Instructor] There are several types of sensors that change their resistance based on the thing they're measuring. For example, a photo resistor changes its resistance based on the amount of light shining on it. The resistance of a strain gauge depends on how it's physically deformed, and the resistance of a thermistor changes with temperature. To read one of those sensors, I need to measure its resistance. Unfortunately, I often use these types of resistive sensors in projects with microcontrollers, which are not designed to directly measure resistance. But microcontrollers often have analog to digital converters, which are designed to easily measure voltage. So, I need a way to convert the resistance of a sensor into a voltage that I can read with my microcontroller, and the simplest way to do that is with a voltage divider. To measure a resistive sensor, I'll create a voltage divider with the top resistor, R1, being a…

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