March 8, 2013

Arduino: Using as a temperature sensor

anik Arduino arduino, arduino uno, gadgets, sensor, technology, temperature, tutorial 0 Comments

Folks here I’m back! As usual so much busy days. This time I’m back with some thing new! You might have heard about Arduino (or you might not have). If you have not heard about Adduino it’s time to know about this awesome gadget.

Arduino is an open-source electronic prototyping platform. There are so many versions of it. I have got the Arduino Uno. It has an on-board micro-controller (ATMEGA 328).

Basically you can program Arduino to control the behavior of it. The micro-controller ATMEGA 328 has got 28 pins in it (14 on both the sides). Among them first 7 pins on the left is used for powering up the IC and the last 6 Pins are for analog input and output purpose. The 14 pins on the right are generally used for digital output or input. The arduino board is manufactured in such a way that it can interact with the computer. It has an on-board programmer in it. it can easily be programmed by connecting a USB cable with it!

An Arduino is very much useful for small or medium scale electronics projects. One can actually come out with thousands of projects using a single Arduino board.

In my further posts I will write about the basic setup and How Tos!

So to make you guys feel interested in such cool stuff today I will show you how I actually managed my Arduino to behave as a basic digital temperature meter.

Used components:

1. Arduino Uno
2. 3 male-male chords
3. IC LM35 Temperature Sensor
4. Laptop :p

Here goes the code:

/*
****************************************************
****************************************************
**Author: Anik Das
**Date: 08/03/2013
**This program is written to read analog output
**from a LM36 temperature sensor
**PIN CONFIG OF LM36
**(keeping the flat side vertically upward)
**PIN 1: Vcc(+5V)
**PIN 2: Analog output
**PIN 3: GND
****************************************************
****************************************************/
float sensor;
float celcius;
float farenheit;
float voltage;


void setup()
{
 Serial.begin(9600); //This starts a serial communication with the arduino
 
 //calibrate the sensos
 Serial.println("Calibrating Sensor...");
 delay(3000);
}

void loop()
{
 
 //Analizing value taken from the sensor
 sensor = analogRead(0); //I have connected the second PIN of the sensor to A0 pin of Arduino
 voltage = (sensor*5000)/1024; //Converts raw sensos value to voltage value
 celcius = voltage/10; //10mV/1 degree celcius
 farenheit = (celcius * 1.8) +32; //Converts celcius to Farenheit
 
 //Priting the value from in the serial terminal
 Serial.println("Temperature:");
 Serial.print("celcius: ");
 Serial.println(celcius,2);
 Serial.print("Farenheit: ");
 Serial.println(farenheit,2);
 delay(1000);
}

Finally It Should look like this:

 

You can actually do lot more cool stuff using this Arduino board.

Hope you enjoyed!