Electrical – Measuring DC current with Hall Effect sensor over PIC on the same circuit

currentcurrent measurementdcmicrocontrollerschematics

Before I begin with my question just so you know I'm not very familiar with electrical engineering so please forgive if I ask some dumb question 🙂

What I want is to know if I can use Hall Effect sensor (ACS712 for example) to measure DC current pulled from LOAD device.

To be more precise, I want to have my measuring device connected on the same DC source as the LOAD device.

However, I noticed on this module on the left for example that I can put it on the "VCC" wire for example, and "OUT" on the right to my PIC microcontroller and to read voltage there, but can I connect my "measuring device" and "VCC" and "GND" of this sensor as well on the same source in series before the load device, would that current detection be affected with "measuring device" it self?

If the answer is yes, can you please post a scheme how this needs to be wired please.

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Best Answer

The device measures the current flowing between the screw terminals, which are isolated from everything else. the pins are to power the hall effect sensor only, however, there's no reason you couldn't have power going through the screw terminals and then going to anything you want, those screw terminals are isolated from the pins so measuring itself is fine. Although those hall sensors aren't known for having amazingly good sensitivity, if you've got a 5A sensor, you'd be hard pressed to measure with an accuracy (or resolution) of much better than 50mA.