This is further to my previous post on IoT.
Let me now discuss different building blocks of an IoT enabled system.
Let us start with sensors.
We all know that we require sensors to sense different physical parameters and to convert them into corresponding electric signals.
There is a large variety of sensors in the market. Any user has to first understand and select one of the different sensors that can be used for his/her desired application by studying their specifications and characteristics.
Sensor signal output is usually of very low voltage and that is the reason we need a high resolution digital multimeter with at least 5 1/2 Digit or 6 1/2 digit display to measure it.
We also need to see the shape of the output signal from different sensors and we thus we need a digital storage oscilloscope with vertical sensitivity from 500µV/div to 5V/div.
It is desired that the oscilloscope has built in digital filters and facility to select more number of samples in average mode ( least 2048 points ) to filter out noise in the captured signal from sensors.
After we capture the sensor output signals, we need different signal conditioning circuits like instrumentation amplifier , V to F, F to V , inverting , non inverting amplifier , comparator , schmitt trigger etc. that work on the signal to make it compatible to connect either with ADC, or with microcontroller for further processing.
We will cover this in my next post. Please stay tuned.