Maker Gerard Morsink has designed a tool designed to carry out I-V curve tracing for transistors, diodes, and different elements — feeding information to a custom-made graphical person interface written in Python.
“This venture builds an I-V curve tracer related to a pc utilizing USB,” Morsink explains of his work. “A curve tracer is a kind of instrument used to measure the present by way of a tool with various voltages throughout it. It’s a specialised piece of digital check gear to investigate the traits of discrete digital elements, reminiscent of diodes, and transistors. The system comprises voltage and present sources that can be utilized to stimulate the system below check (DUT). The curve tracer applies a repeatedly various voltage to 2 terminals of the system below check and measure the quantity of present that the system permits to circulation at every voltage.”
An ATmega8-powered curve tracer offers a technique to rapidly test your elements — with out breaking the financial institution. (📷: Gerard Morsink)
Industrial curve-tracing check gear is available, however Morsink’s gadget is constructed for these on a funds — utilizing the low-cost Microchip ATmega8 microcontroller at its coronary heart, and counting on its inside analog to digital converter (ADC) for taking the readings. Regardless of the small dimension of the microcontroller, Morsink says there’s capability as-yet unused — “extra modes and features might be created sooner or later,” he notes.
The testing system is designed to stream its readings to a number pc over USB, speaking with a graphical Python software Morsink wrote particularly for the venture. As soon as calibrated — so simple as placing a 1kΩ resistor between the collector and emitter pins and performing a single-shot measurement then adjusting as required — the curve tracer does precisely what you’d anticipate, tracing the response curves of elements together with LEDs, PNP transistors, and NPN transistors.
The venture is documented in full on Hackaday.io, whereas the {hardware} design recordsdata and supply code for the software program and firmware can be found on GitHub below the permissive MIT license.
