Many systems includes one or more sensors that need to be checked periodically. The signals coming from these sensors are often low-power current or voltage signals. In battery-powered systems it is important to reduce the power consumption of the microcontroller. The signals are read using the Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) peripheral, and the microcontroller is in Power Saving mode between measurements.
These Microchip Studio examples describe use cases for low-power current and voltage measurements on the AVR® EA family of microcontrollers:
- Low-Power AVR® EA Current Sensing Measurements
Measure a current by using the Analog-to-Digital (ADC) peripheral - Low-Power AVR® EA Resistance Temperature Detector (RTD) Measurements
Measure a voltage by using the Analog-to-Digital (ADC) peripheral
- Acquiring Analog Sensor Data in Low Power Applications
- AVR64EA48 device page
- MPLAB Code Configurator
- MPLAB® X IDE v6.05 or newer
- Microchip AVR64EA48 Device Support Pack AVR-Ex_DFP v2.4.168 or newer
- MPLAB® XC8 Compiler v2.41 or newer
- MPLAB® Code Configurator (MCC)
- MCC Plugin v5.3.0 or newer
- MCC Core v5.5.0 or newer
These examples offer a better understanding for how to periodically measure a voltage or current signal from a sensor while consuming as little power as possible.