What's the easiest way to read the value of 14 potentiometers simultaneously?

[kelvinhall05]

I want to build a project but to do so I need to cheaply read the value/resistance of fourteen different potentiometers simultaneously. What can I use for this? Thanks!

[WereCatf]

3 minutes ago, kelvinhall05 said:

I want to build a project but to do so I need to cheaply read the value/resistance of fourteen different potentiometers simultaneously. What can I use for this? Thanks!

True simultaneous reading is practically impossible. However, fast sequential reading is doable. You could e.g. use four ADS1115 4-channel, 16-bit I2C ADCs and connect them to an Arduino, RPi or similar, or if I2C was too slow for you, you could e.g. use ADS8319 instead, which uses SPI.

[Levent]

IIRC arduino has exactly 14 io pins, if that's not enough you can get expansion shield for it. 

[WereCatf]

Just now, Levent said:

IIRC arduino has exactly 14 io pins, if that's not enough you can get expansion shield for it. 

If you're talking about e.g. Arduino Uno, it only has 6 ADC-pins, not 14. You can't use a digital pin to read analog voltage.

[Pixel5]

you could use any arduino and use multi channel ADC boards to read the potentionmeters.

[ColinLTT]

An Arduino Mega has 16 analog inputs, so it should be able to do what you're asking of it. https://store.arduino.cc/usa/mega-2560-r3

[straight_stewie]

On 10/24/2019 at 10:49 AM, kelvinhall05 said:

I want to build a project but to do so I need to cheaply read the value/resistance of fourteen different potentiometers simultaneously. What can I use for this? Thanks!

The best solution depends on exactly what you are trying to do. The following questions would really help us figure out what "simultaneous" actually means in this context:

 

• What are the potentiometers measuring?
• Are some more important than others?
• How much time do you need between measurement cycles?
• How accurate are the potentiometers?

[mariushm]

Yeah, first define what simultaneous means. Can you live with all measurements done within 1-5ms, or do you need all within 1/100th of a ms or something like that?

Also, decide how much of an accuracy do you need. Can you live with 8 bit precision (0..255) or 10bit (0..1023) or do you need 16 bit?

 

Some ADCs can do thousands of measurement a second, and some will be slower if you use them in 16 bit mode, but faster in 12 bit or 10 bit or 8 bit... an ADC that does 100 samples at 12bit could potentially do 1000 samples a second at 8bit.

 

If you don't need exactly at same time, you could use 4 ADC chips each with 4 inputs and that will give you 16 inputs. If you use i2c ADC chips, you can set the address of each ADC to something unique and then you can use 2-3 wires to communicate with all four ADC chips.

You could broadcast command to all chips to sample on ADC input #1 of all 4 chips, wait the amount of time it takes to sample and read the 4 readings, 1 from each chip. Then send command to sample channel 2 on each of the four chips, wait then read, then repeat with channel 3 and channel 4.

With fast ADCs you could do this in less than 1ms, so it's more or less instant.

 

ex. MPC3008 : 8 channel 10bit ADC, can do up to 200k samples a second: http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/21295d.pdf

So you could use 2 of these on SPI bus and enable each chip one at a time using their CS pin

 

lcsc has some potentially cheaper ADCs

ex  11 channel 10 bit, 33ksamples   TLC1543 https://lcsc.com/product-detail/Analog-To-Digital-Converters-ADCs_TI_TLC1543CDWR_TLC1543CDWR_C58251.html

 

[kuro68k]

This is easy to do. I don't know why everyone is suggesting ridiculously complex solutions.

 

Look at how a typical microcontroller ADC works. It uses sample and hold and mux. You can build your own 16 channel version.

 

For the sample hold all you need are some FETs to connect/disconnect the pots and suitable caps for the hold. Then some analogue switches for the mux.

 

Youwill need some op-amps for buffering and to sort out impedance issues but you might be able to get away with fewer if you can select the pots to have strong drive.