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IEP Report Yd344

The document describes the design and construction of an analog body-heat thermometer. Several operational amplifier stages are used to manipulate the output of a thermistor into a range where LEDs can indicate changes in temperature. The circuit includes a voltage follower, differential amplifier, inverting amplifier, and comparator. Resistors, capacitors, and a quad op-amp integrated circuit are used. Assembling the circuit on a breadboard was successful, with the LEDs lighting up at different temperature thresholds measured by the thermistor. The student found the course introduction to analog electronics to be a fun and needed experience compared to their primary interest in digital electronics.

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Yuvraj Dubey
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36 views6 pages

IEP Report Yd344

The document describes the design and construction of an analog body-heat thermometer. Several operational amplifier stages are used to manipulate the output of a thermistor into a range where LEDs can indicate changes in temperature. The circuit includes a voltage follower, differential amplifier, inverting amplifier, and comparator. Resistors, capacitors, and a quad op-amp integrated circuit are used. Assembling the circuit on a breadboard was successful, with the LEDs lighting up at different temperature thresholds measured by the thermistor. The student found the course introduction to analog electronics to be a fun and needed experience compared to their primary interest in digital electronics.

Uploaded by

Yuvraj Dubey
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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1CW IEP

Thermometer
Design Project
Yuvraj Dubey
Girton College

February 2023
Introduction
An analog body-heat thermometer is designed and built using the electronics skills picked
up from exercises A-F on the IA IEP course running from October to the end of February
for the final project. Several different kinds of op-amp configurations, potential dividers,
and dual rail power supplies are used to manipulate the signal from the temperature sensing
device into a range where LEDs can be driven to signal the changes in temperature.

Basic Design
After consideration of the different ways the temperature could be extracted using the
kitset, it was initially considered most desirable to use the AD592 as it was a current source,
which could be tuned very easily with a variable potentiometer. Unfortunately, the AD592 in
the kitset provided appeared to be defective, so the thermistor setup was used instead.
The electronic thermometer uses several operational amplifier stages in order to manipulate
the output of the thermistor to be usable by the LED front-end.
1) The first stage has a gain of just 1, it is simply a voltage follower set-up to prevent the
thermistor/resistor combination losing linearity as the current increases.
2) Now in theory the thermistor will have 2.5V across at room temperature (if we use a 10K
resistor in the potential divider setup). This offset needs to be eliminated so the circuit can
react to changes after room temperature. In this case a differential amplifier is desirable,
because the offset and some gain can be achieved simultaneously.
3) Now the signal is negative, this is no good! An inverting amplifier is used next to flip this back
to the positive range, and to provide some final amplification before the LED stage
4) Finally a quad op-amp IC is used in a comparator setup to turn on the LEDs as the input
voltage rises.
Parts List
- Op-Amp x3
- 1k & 10k resistors (differential stage)
- 1.5k & 1k resistors (inverting stage)
- BOB dual rail amplifier
- 10uF capacitor & 1k resistor (PSU filtering)
- Quad op-amp IC
- Tuning trim pot
- LED x4
- Comparator biasing resistors

Method & Setup


Firstly, the thermistor was set up with a 10k in series for a potential divider combination.

The next step was the voltage follower – a very straightforward and simple circuit to implement.
Then came the critical differential amplifier. A reference is provided by the a trim pot and 4.7k
resistor to bring the output of the differential amplifier to zero at room temperature. This was
experimentally verified with the PicoScope before the rest of the circuit was connected.

The 1k and 10k resistors act to provide a factor of 10 gain on the ~270mV swing on the thermistor
once a finger was applied, giving an output of -2.7-0V between the output and ground. Then a
simple inverting amplifier with 1.5x gain brings the output voltage between 0-4V. This is then
routed into the OP484 quad op-amp with 4 sets of reference resistors, creating a comparator
network triggering at 1, 2, 3, and 4 volts.
Results &
Discussion
Results
Assembling the circuit was not too
cumbersome – the LTSpice diagram helped
greatly in identifying which components had to
end up where on the breadboard.

Plus the provided breadboards had generous


length, allowing the op-amps and supporting
components to be spread out relatively
comfortably. The thermistor was more
susceptible to self-heating errors compared to
the other chip-based solutions, so we could
see the LEDs took quite a while to switch off
relative to the time taken for them to come on
once heat was applied.

Additional jumper cables had to be sourced


from my personal stash as the kitset didn’t
quite have enough, but other than that the
thermometer was a rather enjoyable build.

Conclusion
And thus we seem to have reached the end of the 1A IEP course. Having my predominant
interest in digital electronics, this course was a fun and much needed taster of the confusing
and mysterious world of analog electronics. The USB PicoScope was far superior to the
ancient high frequency DSOs I’d used in the past in the UI department – so much faster to get
the signal in the right range and set the triggers needed to get a good capture.

It wasn’t even too bad to get working on Linux, some improvement is definitely required in the
documentation department but as soon as I realised I needed to tweak user group permissions
it worked brilliantly.

I think I’ll miss the weekly electronics builds, but now analog data acquisition is on the cards
for my next endeavour. Onwards and upwards!

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