I'm looking to make a device to regulate a heater to maintain 100-110 degrees Fahrenheit in a small, moderately insulated container. Specifically, I'm wondering what I might have in my parts drawer that would make a suitable temperature sensing device. It need not be especially accurate or precise. I thought if this device is also in a TO-220 package or similar, maybe it could also be the heating element. Any suggestions or experience on sensing temperature with a common component I already have in my parts bins?
Electronic – Ideas for a cheap, simple, common temperature sensing component
sensortemperature
Best Answer
You can use a normal silicon junction diode to measure the temperature. Even inexpensive ones like the proverbial 1N4148 will work. The trick is to bias the diode with a constant current source of one milliampere. You need to make sure that the constant currrent source itself is pretty stable with temperature or it will affect the accuracy of the diode temperature sensor.
Once biased in this manner the sensor diode will produce a forward voltage drop that is amazingly linear over a large range. Applications that I have designed worked over the range of -55C to +135C. The forward voltage drop decreases with increased temperature and so is what we call inversely proportional with temperature. The rate of change of the diode voltage is about 2.2mV per 1C.
It is generally necessary to provide for amplification of the diode voltage drop and provide some offset so that the range of temperatures involved can be read via an MCU's A/D converter. An opamp can work nicely for this part of the circuit. If it is necessary to calibrate the sensor circuit it can be done with two trimpots in the opamp circuit to adjust the gain and offset of the amplifier. Calibration can also be done in software of the MCU as well if you provide a straightforward way to save the scale and offset values of the calibration in something like an EEPROM of part of the MCU Flash memory.
The above approach can be a fun learning experience and should work well for you. The diode is fairly easy to mount at the temperature sensing location requiring just two active wires plus possibly a shield if it is an electrically noisy environment. An alternative you may want to consider instead could be to acquire a low cost IC temperature sensor. The old standard LM75A is available in easy to wire SO-8 package and can be connected on a remote cable of just four wires. You would connect the I2C bus connections of the IC to an MCU control board.
There is a slight challenge that needs to be dealt with for the remote mounting of a temperature sensor. The connecting wires can act as a thermally conductive heat sink on the temp sensor thus offset the temperature reading some. For a simple control system this can usually be "adjusted out" by setting the control setpoint down by an equivalent amount.