F to bits

Seeking a packaged line (~~60hz) frequency [or period] counter with I2C or SPI output to feed a Mega2560 box. The goal is to monitor a b/u generator's speed.

Suggestions?

-- A host is a host from coast to snipped-for-privacy@nrk.com & no one will talk to a host that's close.......................... Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433 is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

Reply to
David Lesher
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why not use the Mega2560 to measure the period?

Reply to
Lasse Langwadt Christensen

That's a possibility we're considering....

--
A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz@nrk.com 
& no one will talk to a host that's close.......................... 
Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433 
is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433
Reply to
David Lesher

Yes, Mega2560 is probably good enough. The question is what you are going to do with the data? I assume you need to send it to a more powerful computer (server) somewhere.

Reply to
edward.ming.lee

All the "frequency" oriented things I have seen with SPI in the PI universe are pulse train oriented. If you can get the AC waveform down to pulses, that might work. But that's out of the frying pan into the fire.

You might be able to make do with a lesser processor; not sure.

Clip the waveform, use a diode pair after the clipper to feed two PIO - one for up, one for down. Be careful of voltage and current range on the PIO. I'd have to headscratch a bit on the clipper - you want a pretty hi-Z output.

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I'd have to think isolation thru on something like this. Might use optos. Dunno yet.

You'd prefer that this turn on and off at pi/4, 3pi/4,

5pi/4 and 7pi/4. That's negotiable through oversampling. For production, I might use digital pots to tune the duty cycle.

I'd butch the clipper/diode setup up and watch it on a scope for a while to make sure it's not gonna damage the PIO or itself. Buy enough parts to make three. Again, not being a hardcore analog guy, I'd have to think about isolation and the like.

That gives you up to four time measurements per cycle. The critical design element then becomes choice of filters.

Arduino has a library function called "micros()" that returns a

32 bit upcounter w/ resolution of 4 or 8 microseconds. It rolls over at like 70 seconds @ 16MHz.

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8x oversampling for 60Hz is 960Hz - a very long time @ 16MHz. That should satisfy Nyquist although the duty cycle might be off. You'll have to consider the time to output to the USB serial port....
--
Les Cargill
Reply to
Les Cargill

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