Friday, May 5, 2017

Automatically reading data with Adafruit INA219 Current Sensor Breakout

 


The Adafruit INA219 Current Sensor Breakout connects to the Arduino and the circuit you want to measure. This allows one to automatically take data rather than using two multimeters.

The following link gives the assembly process, the wiring diagrams, and the programming needed to use the board: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-ina219-current-sensor-breakout/assembly


After soldering the six-pin header and the 2 pin screw terminal to the board, I was able to make the proper connections from the board to the Arduino shown in Figure 1 below.


adafruit_products_Current_Measurement_Signals_bb-1024.jpg
Figure 1


Then I connected a battery and a resistor (as the load) to the current sensor breakout board. Figure 2 below shows all the proper connections.


Figure 2 

After making these proper connections, I downloaded the zip file with the library needed for the Arduino. Again, all the needed information is located in the link https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-ina219-current-sensor-breakout/programming.

NOTE: The link above does not include the correct way to add a library. The following link will help with this (See Importing a .zip Library section): https://www.arduino.cc/en/guide/libraries

The code will then upload to the Arduino and print the output shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3
 
The next step would be to use the PV cell rather than using the battery. Then it would be a good ida to save the data to a file.