Measuring battery voltage with ADC gpio

Thomas

I am trying to measure battery voltage using the ADC pin which is listed as gpio2 on the data sheet. However when I try to create the gpio object

mraa:Gpio adc = new mraa::Gpio(2);

I get the error "Invalid GPIO pin specified". Is the mraa gpio numbering the same as the datasheet's?

Also from what I read about the ADC, I think the command

printf("voltage %d \n",adc->read());

should print a integer between 0-255 which corresponds to the voltage between 0-3.3v on the gpio pin. Is this correct?

Thanks!

Thomas

Thomas

I found that
mraa:Gpio adc = new mraa::Gpio(7);

is the right command, but when I do

printf("voltage %d \n",adc->read());

The program prints 1 regardless of the voltage applied to that pin.

Do I need to do something further to get the ADC pin working?

Thank you,

Thomas

WereCatf

You are not reading the analog value of the pin, you're reading it as a digital GPIO-pin. Use the aio-class instead: https://iotdk.intel.com/docs/master/mraa/classmraa_1_1_aio.html and https://iotdk.intel.com/docs/master/mraa/internals.html

Thomas

Thank you very much!

Hannibal

Is there any Python code example for reading ADC value in UP board?

Dan O'Donovan

I don't have a prepared example to send you. But I suggest the following, which should be straightforward to implement:
- Read the value from '/sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:device0/in_voltage_scale'. You'll only need to do this once (or you could hard-code it as well if you prefer, as it doesn't change)
- Read the value from '/sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:device0/in_voltage_raw'. This is the "live" raw value obtained directly from the ADC. Its an 8-bit value, so it will be an integer between 0-255.

Multiply the raw value by the scale value. Now you have a reading from the ADC in millivolts.

Hannibal

Thank you