Microchip ARD00354 Wheatstone Bridge Reference Design for MCP6V26, MCP6V27, MCP6N11

The ARD00354 from Microchip is a brilliant demo board that allows you to test the MCP6N11. The MCP6N11 is an instrumentation amp (INA) and also includes Microchips MCP6V26 and MCP6V27. This board is powered from a USB connection and allows you to easily read data on a PC for ease of use.

This modules bridge output is a small differential mode signal with a large common mode. Also included on the board is a 12-bit ADC to convert analogue signals into a more workable, digital format.

Microchip provides a free software called 'Thermal Management Utility'. You can find a link for it below. Thermal Management Utility handles communications through the USB connected to your board and will display data on a strip chart. It can store single points of calibration ecoefficiency on the PIC MCU and tells the PIC MCU how to configure the average filter.

http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/ThermalManagementUtility-v1.5.8.zip

USB cable

Instrumentation Amplifier is a type of differential amplifier that has been outfitted with input buffer amplifiers, which eliminate the need for input impedance matching. Characteristics include very low DC offset, low drift, low noise, very high open-loop gain, very high common-mode rejection ratio, and very high input impedances.