Texas InstrumentsSENSOREMULATOREVMPlacas y kits de desarrollo del sensor

The SensorEmulatorEVM provides a complete system for strain and temperature emulation of voltage-excited bridge sensors. The SensorEmulatorEVM uses rotary selector switches and potentiometers to emulate the operation of a voltage-excited Wheatstone resistive bridge sensor at discrete operating points of strain and temperature.

Once the sensor emulator has been programmed, it allows the user to cycle through a set of sensor output conditions very quickly. Doing this with a real sensor can be extremely time consuming because it can take several hours to cycle through various temperatures. Also, some sensors have non-repeatability issues. For example, pressure sensors can have pressure hysteresis and temperature hysteresis. The emulator does not have non-repeatability issues (repeatability errors are typically less than 0.03%). This approach allows the user to program the sensor signal conditioning chip many different ways to quickly and easily assess the optimal calibration settings for a given application.

There are 11 different emulated sensor output conditions: Cold Temperature: 0%, 50%, 100%; Room Temperature: 0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, 100%; Hot Temperature: 0%, 50%, 100%. Each of these senor output conditions is easily selected by a rotary selector switch with a respective LED indicating the chosen condition. Three different emulated temperature signal levels can be programmed for cold temperature, room temperature, and hot temperature. In addition there are 4 different temperature sense configurations: resistor in series with top of bridge sensor; resistor in series with bottom of bridge sensor; diode voltage (on-board accurate reference); diode voltage or temperature dependent resistor (sensor IC current-excited). An external power supply of +/-12V is required to power the SensorEmulatorEVM.