Author Topic: Design for safely measuring mains (review request)  (Read 6939 times)

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Offline Circlotron

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Re: Design for safely measuring mains (review request)
« Reply #50 on: August 21, 2023, 09:49:36 pm »
For your TR1, I strongly recommend that you use a part with 230 VAC primary. Small mains transformers are driven so close to saturation that you get a very distorted output. Running at half nominal voltage improves that a lot.
Good point. I’d also use a toroidal transformer for better frequency and probably phase response. Maybe about 100VA size, not a baby one. And put a small resistive load on the secondary, say 5 or 10 percent so there will be less chance of ringing than if the secondary was open cct. Maybe try different values of load to see if there is any affect on phase shift. And of course, put this transformer upstream of the current sensor, as you have already done.
« Last Edit: August 21, 2023, 10:11:10 pm by Circlotron »
 

Offline Benta

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Re: Design for safely measuring mains (review request)
« Reply #51 on: August 21, 2023, 11:37:31 pm »
Why such anaemic tracks?
Go to at least 0.8 mm, but 1.2 mm won't harm. Or even fatter.
Apart from that, congrats on your results.

 

Offline pceeTopic starter

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Re: Design for safely measuring mains (review request)
« Reply #52 on: August 22, 2023, 02:45:02 pm »
Why such anaemic tracks?  Go to at least 0.8 mm, but 1.2 mm won't harm. Or even fatter.
Why?  My first PCB:  I was using a tutorial for an MCU that used 0.3mm for signal, so I just used that.

At your recommendation, I've bumped it up to 1.2mm.

Since you didn't mention anything about induced current from the mains voltage, should I assume that I don't need to worry about that?

Thank you for all your encouragement!
 

Offline pceeTopic starter

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Re: Design for safely measuring mains (review request)
« Reply #53 on: October 07, 2023, 01:26:53 am »
The PCB arrived, I soldered everything into place, calibrated it, and it works great!

What would be a good way to make the end result (KiCad project, parts list, shopping carts?) available for others to use?  Attach the KiCad project here?  Or is there somewhere else more easily discoverable?

Is there some standard repository for project designs?
 

Offline shapirus

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Re: Design for safely measuring mains (review request)
« Reply #54 on: November 25, 2023, 08:34:57 pm »
What would be a good way to make the end result (KiCad project, parts list, shopping carts?) available for others to use?  Attach the KiCad project here?  Or is there somewhere else more easily discoverable?

Is there some standard repository for project designs?
KiCAD files in a github repository is the way to go.
 

Offline Benta

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Re: Design for safely measuring mains (review request)
« Reply #55 on: November 25, 2023, 10:29:54 pm »
The PCB arrived, I soldered everything into place, calibrated it, and it works great!

What would be a good way to make the end result (KiCad project, parts list, shopping carts?) available for others to use?  Attach the KiCad project here?  Or is there somewhere else more easily discoverable?

Is there some standard repository for project designs?

Gratulations, I'm glad your design was successful!  :-+ :-+

Concerning design repositories... I like your attitude, but I don't really know of any.
GitHub and GitLab are places where projects like yours go to die a quiet death. They're used by programming nerds, but for electronic engineering I don't see any acceptance. They're just too user-unfriendly, cumbersome and geeky.
Sorry.
 

Offline shapirus

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Re: Design for safely measuring mains (review request)
« Reply #56 on: November 26, 2023, 12:36:17 am »
GitHub and GitLab are places where projects like yours go to die a quiet death.
...as long as nobody shows interest in them. They are indexed by search engines and can be found by those looking for what can be considered a match.

They're used by programming nerds, but for electronic engineering I don't see any acceptance. They're just too user-unfriendly, cumbersome and geeky.
Sorry.
This is partially true. Git was most definitely created by extraterrestrial aliens, so to use it one has to have a suitable mindset and the desire to learn it without abandoning the learning.

On the other hand, that alien creature can be dressed as a normal human to make it look familiar and relatively easy to interact with. That's what hosted repo services like github do, and there's also GUI frontends to git which some people find convenient (I would not recommend touching them though -- if you use git, then use the proper command line tool).

Git, being a distributed VCS, is the right tool for the job, which is sharing stuff for others to download and collaborate if they want.

But you're right that chances are that the project will sit there and be rarely seen by anyone. However, my opinion is that if at least one person comes there from a search engine and finds it useful, then it's justified.
« Last Edit: November 26, 2023, 12:37:50 am by shapirus »
 


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