In yesterday’s post, a resistive voltage divider was used to measure the battery voltage – any voltage for that matter, as long as the divider resistor values are chosen properly.

With a 6V battery, a 10 + 10 kΩ divider draws 0.3 ma, i.e. 300 µA. Can we do better?

Sure: 100+100 kΩ draws 30 µA, 1+1 MΩ draws 3 µA, and 10+10 MΩ draws just 0.3 µA.

Unfortunately there are limits, preventing the use of really high resistor divider values.

The ATmega328 datasheet recommends that the output impedance of the circuit connected to the ADC input pin be 10 kΩ or less for good results. With higher values, there is less current available to charge the ADC’s sample-and-hold capacitor, meaning that it will take longer for the ADC to report a stable value (reading it out more than once may be needed). And then there’s the leakage current which every pin has – it’s specified in the datasheet as ± 1 µA max in or out of any I/O pin. This means that a 1+1 MΩ divider may not only take longer to read out, but also that the actual value read may not be accurate – no matter how long we wait or how often we repeat the measurement.

So let’s find out!

The divider I’m going to use is the same as yesterday, but with higher resistor values.

Let’s go all out and try 10 + 10 MΩ. I’ll use the following sketch, which reads out AIO1..4, and sends out a 4-byte packet with the top 8 bits of each ADC value every 8 seconds:

#include <JeeLib.h>

byte payload[4];

void setup () {
  rf12_initialize(22, RF12_868MHZ, 5);
  DIDR0 = 0x0F; // disable the digital inputs on analog 0..3
}

void loop () {
  for (byte i = 0; i < 4; ++i) {
    analogRead(i);                    // ignore first reading
    payload[i] = analogRead(i) >> 2;  // report upper 8 bits
  }

  rf12_sendNow(0, payload, sizeof payload);
  delay(8000);
}

This means that a reported value N corresponds to N / 255 * 3.3V.

With 5V as supply, this is what comes out:

L 10:18:14.311 usb-A40117UK OK 22 193 220 206 196
L 10:18:22.675 usb-A40117UK OK 22 193 189 186 187
L 10:18:31.026 usb-A40117UK OK 22 193 141 149 162
L 10:18:39.382 usb-A40117UK OK 22 193 174 167 164
L 10:18:47.741 usb-A40117UK OK 22 193 209 185 175

The 193 comes from AIO1, which has the 10 + 10 kΩ divider, and reports 2.50V – spot on.

But as you can see, the second value is all over the map (ignore the 3rd and 4th, they are floating). The reason for this is that the 10 MΩ resistors are so high that all sorts of noise gets picked up and “measured”.

With a 1 + 1 MΩ divider, things do improve, but the current draw increases to 2.5 µA:

L 09:21:25.557 usb-A40117UK OK 22 198 200 192 186
L 09:21:33.907 usb-A40117UK OK 22 198 192 182 177
L 09:21:42.256 usb-A40117UK OK 22 197 199 188 183
L 09:21:50.606 usb-A40117UK OK 22 197 195 187 183
L 09:21:58.965 usb-A40117UK OK 22 197 197 186 181
L 09:22:07.315 usb-A40117UK OK 22 198 198 190 184

Can we do better? Sure. The trick is to add a small capacitor in parallel with the lower resistor. Here’s a test using 10 + 10 MΩ again, with a 0.1 µF cap between AIO2 and GND:

Results – at 5V we get 196, i.e. 2.54V:

L 10:30:27.768 usb-A40117UK OK 22 198 196 189 186
L 10:30:36.118 usb-A40117UK OK 22 198 196 188 183
L 10:30:44.478 usb-A40117UK OK 22 198 196 186 182
L 10:30:52.842 usb-A40117UK OK 22 198 196 189 185
L 10:31:01.186 usb-A40117UK OK 22 197 196 186 181

At 4V we get 157, i.e. 2.03V:

L 10:33:31.552 usb-A40117UK OK 22 158 157 158 161
L 10:33:39.902 usb-A40117UK OK 22 158 157 156 157
L 10:33:48.246 usb-A40117UK OK 22 158 157 159 161
L 10:33:56.611 usb-A40117UK OK 22 158 157 157 159
L 10:34:04.959 usb-A40117UK OK 22 159 157 158 161

At 6V we get 235, i.e. 3.04V:

L 10:47:26.658 usb-A40117UK OK 22 237 235 222 210
L 10:47:35.023 usb-A40117UK OK 22 237 235 210 199
L 10:47:43.373 usb-A40117UK OK 22 236 235 222 210
L 10:47:51.755 usb-A40117UK OK 22 237 235 208 194
L 10:48:00.080 usb-A40117UK OK 22 236 235 220 209

Perfect!

Note how the floating AIO3 and AIO4 pins tend to follow the levels on AIO1 and AIO2. My hunch is that the ADC’s sample-and-hold circuit is now working in reverse: when AIO3 is read, the S&H switches on, and levels the charge on the unconnected pin (which still has a tiny amount of parasitic capacitance) and the internal capacitance.

The current draw through this permanently-connected resistor divider with charge cap will be very low indeed: 0.3 µA at 6V (Ohm’s law: 6V / 20 MΩ). This sort of leakage current is probably fine in most cases, and gives us the ability to check the battery level in a wireless node, even with battery voltages above VCC.

Tomorrow I’ll explore a setup which draws no current in sleep mode. Just for kicks…