Electronic – Micro Protection with Long Cables

esdmicrocontrollerprotection

I have a micro controller ATxmega128A1U (datasheet) which will have switches and potentiometers attached to the GPIO and ADC input pins. These inputs will have about 2-3 meters of cabling from the panel to the micro-controller.

1) What sort of protection do I need to put on these inputs? Would a TVS diode arrays be necessary? (something like this perhaps)

2) What sort of filters do I need to put on the lines? Would some simple ferrite chips be enough and how do I chose a ferrite based on frequency response if I don't know what sort of noise may be coupled to the system when deployed?

3) Anything else I need to design for when having cabling this long?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Best Answer

If all you're measuring is a voltage(DC Signal) with the ADC you can probably get away with just putting a small capacitor(~~22nf) to ground to ground along with a voltage follower [a very simple op amp configuration that basically relays a signal while giving the arduino some isolation from noise]. Pretty much any op amp you have laying around will work. An inductor (like one of the ring ones found in computers) in series with the signal wouldn't hurt either. `

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