Thanks for a very interesting refresher article. I hope to see more of these in the future. It's amazing what one tends to forget when it is not being used everyday.
Yes, Paul, and I requested this correction a few weeks ago when another reader noted the incorrect units. Sometimes symbols don't translate well from a Word document to the HTML. I'll ask again--thanks for your reminder.
Hi, Christopher. You make a good point about sensor ranges, so I'll put it on my topic list for a column after I wrap up this series on data-acquisition. You remind me that it's always good to start on a high range with an instrument and then change to a lower scale as appropriate. I once saw a bent needle on a Simpson VOM someone used to measure line power with a low-voltage setting. It almost made me cry.
Glad to see you presenting this. I've often had to point this out to my junior engineers; now I can point them to this article.
On a parallel subject. Are you going to discuss selecting sensor ranges relative to the measured value in question? I've also encounter situations where the engineer selected something like a 0-100 psi pressure transducer to measure a varying pressure with a mean around 80 psi and then just assumed the occasional 100 psi spikes where as high as the signal got.... I was trained to select a sensor which put the nominal reading at ~50% of the sensor range if I was fairly sure of what I was measuring, and to use less of the range if there was more uncertainty in the measured quantity.
Very nice solution for utilizing the entire range available and increasing the apparent resolution – with a very cost effective and easy to implement solution. Thanks for another great article!
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