Autorange capacitance meter

Technology
Autorange capacitance meter

Piccapprotopic1
Here’s how to make a DIY capacitance meter (it measures capacitors) E=MNC writes – “Finally, I managed to persuade myself to make a really powerful capacitance meter. This is an autoranged version, which means one does not need to adjust the range settings. Furthermore, the measuring range is quite large, from 5pF all the way to 2600uF. It is all taken care of by the PIC16F873A inside the circuit. It is based on a very simple circuit analysis principle of charging and discharging of capacitors in an RC circuit.” [via] (source and schematics included)- Link.

Related:

  • PICMicro Pet Projects – Link.
  • Digital Capacitance Meter – Link.

10 thoughts on “Autorange capacitance meter

  1. SonicReducer says:

    would this LCD work?

    http://tinyurl.com/tlct5

    i’ve been looking for an excuse to buy one of these LCD’s since they came in stock

  2. Oracle1729 says:

    Sonic, the Sparkfun LCD has some kind of “Serial backpack ” module. For this project, you need a parallel LCD. Sparkfun’s LCD is parallel without their back module, so you can probably use it if the module is removable.

    Keep in mind, most of the price goes for that LCD backpack, as you can see from the product description, the LCD itself is just incidental to the backpack.

    Anyway this is a nice looking project. Excellent work by the designer :).

  3. SonicReducer says:

    so this one:

    http://tinyurl.com/yjhjua

    i emailed him and here are the missing values:
    C3-5 are debouncing caps, her reccomends 470nF

    Q1 is a 4MHz crystal

  4. SonicReducer says:

    so this one would work?:

    http://tinyurl.com/yjhjua

    i emailed him and here are the missing values:
    C3-5 are debouncing caps, her reccomends 470nF

    Q1 is a 4MHz crystal

  5. avrFreak says:

    Well, I just finished reformatting the source c ode for this project to match my personal tastes. In the process of so doing, I discovered several “instructions” that are not legal AVR instructions, and will not assemble. In particular, MOVEW, and several cases of incorrect Immediate Mode instructions such as STSW. No such AVR instruction.

    I am going to rework the firmware and get it working, and I will post the corrected source code, if someone will tell me where it ought to be posted.

    Again, as it is in the downloadable file, this firmware will NOT assemble. I have no idea how he got his prototype working, but it certainly wasn’t with the Atmel assembler and this source code.

    avrFreak

Comments are closed.

Discuss this article with the rest of the community on our Discord server!
Tagged

current: @adafruit - previous: MAKE, popular science, hackaday, engadget, fallon, braincraft ... howtoons, 2600...

View more articles by Phillip Torrone

ADVERTISEMENT

Maker Faire Bay Area 2023 - Mare Island, CA

Escape to an island of imagination + innovation as Maker Faire Bay Area returns for its 15th iteration!

Buy Tickets today! SAVE 15% and lock-in your preferred date(s).

FEEDBACK