An exclusive guide to sensor circuits
Before going into detail about what is sensor circuits? How do they work? And their types. Let’s have a look at on basic idea of sensor circuits. The main purpose of all this technological advancement is to bring automation and ultimately ease to daily routine life.
Nowadays almost every automated device is fully loaded with different kinds of sensors, like the opening of the garage door as the owner’s car comes closer to it, automatic adjustment of room temperature, burglar alarm ring when there is a fire or more than enough smoke in premises, and many more. This shows there are sensors in almost every modern device which is meant to bring automation to human life.
Sensors are electronic devices that sense changes in the surroundings and convert that rate of change into electrical signals and this signal is interpretable by either machines or humans. Sensor circuits are an important IoT tool (Internet of Things).
These sensor circuits detect a physical change in surroundings, monitor it, interpret or control it, and store it as an electrical signal. In short, Sensor circuits reduce the gap between the logical world and the physical world and act as eyes and ears for the logical world to interpret the physical world.
What are the advantages of sensors circuits?
There are multiple advantages of deploying sensor circuits. As sensor circuits have higher sensitivity and are more accurate in interpreting the receiving data than humans. Sensor proves more beneficial in monitoring information than humans, as sensor works all time tirelessly and performs pre-programmed tasks immediately and swiftly than human.
Following are some advantages of using sensor circuits.
- Intelligent smart sensors allow the self-test ability to check the functionality of the sensor
circuit is accurate or not.
- Collecting more accurate data while improving process time.
- Allows real-time processing of data, which also helps in improving processing time. While reducing the total cost, sensor circuits also help in increasing productivity in lesser
time.
- Sensor circuits improve efficiency while reducing energy wastage.
What are the components used in sensor circuits?
Sensor circuits comprise different electronic circuits to perform the required task. Generally, these circuits have semiconductor devices and conducting paths for the flow of current . Such sensor circuits sense change and generate a very small electrical signal, which means there is a requirement of amplifying that small signal to properly analyze.
A comparator is another circuit that is most often used in sensor circuits, which compares the receiving signal with some preset, defined signal to generate accurate signals. These tasks can be done by using a single operational amplifier circuit.
What are the 4 main types of sensors?
Following are the classification of sensors circuits based on their working principles:
- Active Sensors: Sensors that require an external or internal power source to operate. Mostly active sensors generate waves, transmit them toward the target and receive radiation. A power source is required by sensors to perform all these operations like an ultrasonic sensor.
- Passive Sensors: In contrary to active sensors, These types of sensors usually don’t need a power source to perform the desired task but only receive radiation from the target and convert them to an electrical signal, like infrared radiation, and thermal radiation. Examples include Thermistors.
The following classification of sensor circuits is based on the conversion phenomenon of input and output signals:
- Analog Sensors: These sensors are more accurate and more precise than digital sensors, this is due to the continuous nature of the analog signal. These sensors can detect and responds to a very small change in the put signal.
- Digital Sensors: These sensors have a predefined set of all maximum possible values, due to which they can’t represent slight change but are limited to, fixed change in data. This property makes these sensors lesser precise than analog sensors.
What is a sensor made of?
Generally, every sensor circuit is made up of the following units:
Sensing Unit: it is the main unit which usually has two sub-units.
- Sensor: which senses the change in the surrounding.
- ADC Converter: Usually data collected by the sensor in the sensor circuit is analog therefore there is a need of converting that data to digital to process it further.
Processing Unit: After making the collected data ready to feed the processing unit, it is then further processed and analyzed in the processing unit. There is small storage associated with it to store data on a temporary basis during processing.
What is the most used sensor in circuits?
The following sensor is most commonly used in circuits.- IR Sensor: Infrared Sensor is used for object detection, generally are light-based.
- Pressure Sensor: Used to detect the amount ofpressure being applied to a specific surface.
- Light Sensor: used to detect light through its resistance property, also called photo sensor.
- Ultrasonic Sensor: used to detect distance from an object without making contact.
- Microphone: It’s a sound sensor used to record surrounding sounds.
- Tilt Sensor: Used to detect orientations and angles at which an object is being tilted.
- Proximity Sensor: used to detect objects in surroundings without making contact.
- Temperature Sensor: Used to sense temperature.
- Touch Sensor: generally used as a switch, which turned on and off when they interpret as they touched.
How do sensor circuits work?
As we know, sensors always sense the change in their surroundings and represent that change in the electrical signal. They perform their tasks as follows.
Sensors have an electronic system to take input from surrounding which are usually a physical quantity like heat, light, sound, and vice versa. After having input, sensors have a processing unit to analyze the received input.
After analyzing the input, the sensor converts that physical quantity into the form of an electrical signal, and then the resultant signal can be sent to the output port either in the form of an analog or digital signal.
