This project started as a class project for school, but I expanded on it to make it into a full-fledged "Bench Buddy" that aids in sourcing and measuring signals on your EE workbench.

Background

For my PCB Design class at the Colorado School of Mines, we were given a schematic for a power supply with the following characteristics:

  • 0-10V, 0-1A adjustable (by potentiometer) output
  • 12V wall-wart input
  • VU-meter style current/voltage meter (an LED bar graph)

We drew the PCB design ourselves in EAGLE.

My Additions

I decided to add my own tweaks to the design, so I added a Data Acquisition daughter board that features:

  • USB control of the power supply
  • Measurement of the voltage and current sourced
  • Conditioned AINs
  • Digital I/O
  • "FGEN" output (High Speed DAC)
  • Isolated USB control (so USB ground can be ±100V (ish) above or below the power supply GND without causing issues)

On the main board, I added:

  • 3.3V and 5V regulated supplies (just a 1A rated linear regulator)
  • PTC fuses to protect the wall-wart supply
  • Control to switch between PC-controlled and manual-controlled power supply

PCB

The PCBs were designed in EAGLE and the files are available on GitHub here

Code

I wrote the firmware for the DAQ in C (arduino), and it is linked in the project and can be accessed via git here in the folder BenchBuddyArduino

I wrote the Graphical User Interface in Visual C# (with Visual Studio) and it is linked here, in the same git repo but in the directory BenchBuddyUI

Code that is finished:

  • 0-10V 0-1A power supply 
    • Has calibration constants implemented for output, not for readback
    • Can be changed via the GUI
    • The value can be measured and shown in the GUI
    • A graph of the actual value is shown in the display
  • Raw analog display in the GUI.
    • A little more work is needed to get the (calibrated) value in volts to update in the GUI, but the calibration is mostly implemented in the firmware.
    • The value is automatically updated in the GUI (just in ADC counts right now)
    • Multiple readings are taken, then an average is taken and communicated, adding a little more resolution to the AIN measurements.
  • Digital I/O, both direction and state can be set in the GUI

Code that needs to be finished:

  • Plotting of the analog values over time (similar to a low-speed oscope)
  • Most of the "analog plotting" section of the GUI
  • Baud switching was implemented in my python testbed, but it is buggy in the GUI.
    • The DAQ board starts up in 2400 baud but a command can be sent to switch it to higher bauds. This was successfully implemented in my python testbed code custom_serial_tools.py