Introduction

The temperature logger kit is designed for the Mechatronics and Systems Engineering course at BFH. This kit provides students with microcontroller-based hardware.

The components on the hardware offer a wide range of functionalities to develop and implement many applications.

Modules at a glance

Temperature logger frontend

This board is used as an interface between the Nucleo board and the thermocouple. It offers two usable channels with two possibilities for measurement.

One possibility is to measure the thermocouple after analogue signal processing with an analogue-digital converter. The other possibility is to measure the thermocouple with a fully integrated IC.

Both signal paths are connected to the MCU system via the serial bus SPI as a slave with the Nucleo-64 board from ST Microelectronics.

STM32 Nucleo-64

The board contains the μC, which is the core on which the application is executed to orchestrate the internal and external peripherals and process data. The STM32 Nucleo-64 board offers an affordable and flexible way to try out new concepts, build prototypes and learn μC programming. The board offers a rich variety of functions:

  • Standardized connectors as arduino connectors and ST-Morpho pin headers

  • On-board ST-Link debugger/programmer to flash and debug you program

  • Open source libraries, IDE’s and extensions

mbed Application shield

On this board are several hardware components placed, which can be used with the μC. They can be divided in inputs and outputs:

Inputs

  • 2 analog potentiometers

  • 5-way joystick

  • temperature sensor

  • 3-axis accelerometer

Outputs

  • speaker

  • RGB LED

  • 128x32 graphics LCD

Based on the available components, a nice and minimalistic human-machine interface can be realised.

Nucleo-64 CAN adapter

This adapter is used to connect the μC to a CAN bus network. This adapter generates the necessary voltage levels required by the high-speed CAN bus standard.

Warning

When the adapter is connected, the thermocouple IC option of channel II cannot be used because the chip select pin cannot be tied to GND.

How to use and read the documentation

The online documentation focuses on explaining the temperature logger module. For this reason, the first three sections refer only to this topic.

  • Section measurement flow describes the basic principle of this measurement.

  • Section PCB documentation describes the PCB interactively with all components and the pins.

  • In section assembly you can view the 3D model with instructions on how to assemble or disassemble the panels.

  • All the schematics of the modules are grouped in the schematics section.

  • The data sheets of all components as well as selected manuals are listed by module in the section of the respective name.

  • In section tutorials are exercises along with step-by-step instructions published. A first getting started tutorial explains how to use the Integrated Development Environment IDE and the μC to write, compile and run a program.