Playing with Voltage Sensor

Hey readers, welcome back to another progress update of our project! This week we will be talking about our new "toy", the Voltage Sensor.

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Voltage sensor is able to detect the voltage of the battery. This allows the robot to return to the charging dock when it battery is below a threshold. The voltage sensor outputs an analog signal. This signal does not shows the voltage directly therefore some calculation must be done to convert it to voltage.

We will be using the Phidgets Precision Voltage Sensor

The steps for the doing conversion is shown below. The team connected a power supply the voltage sensor and voltage sensor signal to Arduino Mega 2560.

Step 1: Set the power supply to 5V

Step 2: Record the analog value received by the Arduino

Step 3: Repeat step 1-2 in intervals of 0.5V until 15V

Step 4: Plot a graph in Microsoft Excel with the voltage as the Y-axis and analog values as the X-axis

Step 5: Obtain the equation of the line

Using the equation obtain from the graph, the team is able to obtain the voltage from the analog value output by the voltage sensor. For example, if the analog value is 633, by substituting the values into the equation,

Voltage = (0.0731 * analog values) - 37.088

= (0.0731 * 633) - 37.088

= 9.1843V

Therefore, the voltage is 9.1843V.

That's all for this week, stay tune to know more about our robot. And we will see you next week.