Electronic – +/-5V to 0…5V and not failing for +/-12V

operational-amplifier

I'm trying to convert a voltage that is between -5V and +5V to the range of 0…5V. These voltages can be found in "euroracks"/"doepfer a100"-systems which are modular synthesizers for music.

This conversion is possible with the schematics found at https://masteringelectronicsdesign.com/design-a-bipolar-to-unipolar-converter/

With a TL074 opamp this works fine on my breadboard.

Now there is a problem with that: the input-voltage for my use-case (eurorack/a100 modules) can be -12…12V in some cases. In that case (e.g. anything that is outside -5…5V) I would like to clamp it to -5…5V.
Limitting to +5 I can do with a LM336Z-5.0 I think but how can I protect against voltages lower than -5V? (or less than 0V after conversion)

The signal I'm converting is a voltage that represents a frequency. E.g. 3.250V is note C4 see wikipedia

The output will be send to an arduino adc pin.

Best Answer

schematic

simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab

No Amp required. This attenuates to Vin/2 with a 5.0V offset to centre the output to V+/2

Anything |Vin| >5.2V clips with low current from 10k//10k effective series resistance.

Otherwise if |Vin| < 5V diode is high impedance (off).

If input impedance is 1M then the actual signal is attenuated 5k/1M*100%=0.5% which is less than 1% tolerance of R1,R2