Week #10: Comparators & LM34

[rjagodowski]

This week we will discuss precision Comparators and Differential and Instrumentation Amplifiers. We will do several experiments in the coming weeks to investigate the operation of these devices. Based upon component availability, we might change the order in which we perform the Comparator and Differential Amplifier lab experiments.

We'll begin this week with a discussion on Precision Comparators:

Op-Amp Comparators from www.electronics-tutorials.ws
.

This is a great video on Comparator Applications from Texas Instruments (17:29 WATCH this video).

Before we discuss the Precision Comparators, we need to spend a few minutes introducing Open Collector Outputs, in this case, from EvilMadScientist.com

Comparators: LM-339 Data Sheet or here as a pdf:

LM339 Datasheet.PDF

(161.51 KiB) Downloaded 124 times

The LM339 Comparator & LM34 Temperature Sensor Lab is posted here. The website that inspired the LM339 & LM34 Comparator lab is: ermicroblog. There are some typos on the schematics and their description of the circuit operation is misleading, which will be pointed out in class and when we build these circuits in lab. Actually, aside from the circuits, this site isn't so great. LOL



A video comparator summary from Comparator Circuits Introduction (21:38) from BristolWatch.com. This is a good video which you should watch. The content is mostly good, but it is a bit annoying that he doesn't pronounce "comparator" properly!