Voltage on line detection

Sep 15, 2006 2 Replies

I have a small board about 4 inches by 4 inches with a plasma bulb on it. The bulb is putting out a ton of RF, EMI, RFI, etc.... I want to test to see if voltage is going to the bulb. How can I safely test the line and tell my microprossor without giving it too much noise? Will just a diode with a voltage divider work? What about if I put a BJT on it? space is an issue though.



You may only need the voltage divider.

You can make the resistor values very high so that the capacitance and protection diodes on the microprocessor's input will keep the voltage within the limits. The micro can sample the input at some highish rate and assume, lets say, that if the voltage is there in any millisecond out of 100 it is turned on.

-- kensmith@rahul.net forging knowledge

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