EE-365: Industrial Instrumentation and Measurements

PROJECT 1 – DC Multi meter Design

Waleed Bin Khalid & Amna Anwar

February 24, 2020

Introduction

The aim of this project is to take a D’Arsonval movement and use it as an Ammeter,
Voltmeter, and Ohmmeter. This meter movement takes a small electric current that flows
across a magnetic coil and uses it to rotate the pointer attached. This pointer points to a
reading on the scale attached. The maximum deflection of the pointer happens when the
current passed through the coil is 4.4mA, this is known as the full scale deflection current
(I ) therefore the deflection current must be limited in a certain manner in order to
fabricate a useable multi meter. The internal resistance ( 𝑅 ) of this D’Arsonval movement
is 217Ω. The project is divided into multiple stages. The first stage of the project involves
designing an Ammeter with a range of 0-100mA and a voltmeter with a range of 0-50V. The
second stage will include designing an ohmmeter that not only measures resistances from
1-100kΩ but also considers a 10% variation of battery voltage. The third stage will
incorporate combining the three circuits and troubleshooting for any errors and
discrepancies. And finally, making a scale that is suitable for this multi meter design.

The block diagram in figure 1 shows a flowchart version of the project. To operate the three
meters three switches are installed. Each switch is the control for each meter. The detailed
circuit version is shown in figure 2. Hardware implementation is shown in figure 3.

Figure 1

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 Figure 2

Figure 3

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Methods and Materials

For this multi meter design, first we removed the half wave rectifier circuitry that was
attached with the D’Arsonval movement as our design is for DC (direct current) only. Then,
we measured the internal resistance (𝑅 ) and the full-scale deflection current (𝐼 ) of the
D’Arsonval movement. Using this and the range required for the different meters, further
calculations were made to fabricate the circuits for the respective meter.

Ammeter

The D’Arsonval movement only allows for a maximum current reading of 4.4mA. In order
to extend the range to the required 0 – 100mA, a resistor must be placed in parallel with
the meter movement known as the shunt resistor ( 𝑅 ) as shown in Figure 4. This resistor
absorbs the remaining current that cannot be handled by the movement.

Figure 4

The calculated value of shunt resistance, 𝑅 , is 9.987Ω (see A.1 for calculations). Since, 𝑅
is approximately equal to 10Ω, we used a single 10Ω resistance to implement shunt
resistance in the hardware however in the simulation, the exact value of 𝑅 was
implemented. Figure 5 shows the circuit implementation.

Figure 5

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 Figure 6

As seen in Figure 6, at 0mA multi meter reading the current flowing through the meter will
be 0A i.e. the meter will have no deflection and the full-scale deflection current flows
through the meter when the measured value is at its full range (100mA).

Voltmeter

The D’Arsonval movement has a very low maximum voltage. So, in order to accomplish the
required range of 0 – 50V, a resistor must be placed in series with the movement in order
to limit the amount of current passing through as shown in Figure 7. This resistance is
known as the multiplier resistance (𝑅 ) and is very high compared to the meter
resistance.

Figure 7

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The calculated value of multiplier resistance, 𝑅 , is 11147Ω (see A.2 for calculations). The
approximate value of this resistance can be achieved on the hardware by a series
combination of 10KΩ, 1KΩ, and 150Ω resistors. However, in the simulation circuit (shown
in figure 8) the exact value of Rs is implemented. The simulation results are shown in figure
9.

Figure 8

Figure 9

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Ohmmeter:

To design the ohmmeter, we used a basic series circuit. The series circuit consisted of the
internal resistance of the D’Arsonval meter, the resistance to be measured and another
current limiting resistance, 𝑅 . The value for 𝑅 is 1828, and 90 percent of the value is
implemented using a fixed resistance, whereas 10 percent of the value is realized as a
variable resistor (see A.3 for calculations).

Zero adjust:

The reason for splitting 𝑅 into fixed and variable resistance was to achieve zero adjust
feature but this approach caused the primary issue of the scale changing too much upon a
change in battery potential. To avoid zero, adjust other approaches were tested as well and
their difficulties are mentioned.

A potentiometer could have been installed in parallel, but this approach required the
parallel sum of the potentiometer resistance and Rm to be very small as compared to the
series sum of measured and fixed resistance 𝑅 . This approach could not be utilized since
the value for 𝑅 was not too big that the condition for this approach could be achieved.

Another approach was using shunt resistance, which required us to find a suitable shunt
resistance which could then accommodate the zero adjust feature but due to unavailability
of measuring instruments, trial and error approach was used to find the shunt resistance
but a suitable value was not reached upon.

Hence the eventual circuit for Ohmeter that was used is attached below in figure 10.

Figure 10

The graphs of the output current through the meter agaisnt the different values of R1 at
different levels of the battery voltage are shown below. Note R1 is the resistance being
measured.

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At 9 volts of battery:

Figure 11

At 8.5 volts of battery:

Figure 12

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At 8.1 volts of battery:

Figure 13

The value for P for different 𝑅 (resistance to be measured) is shown below in figure 14. P is
the ratio of the current to the full-scale current, which translates to the amount of
deflection on the meter.

Figure 14

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Results:

 Ammeter

 Voltmeter

 Ohmmeter

Note: The following resistances are measured at 9 volts of power supply.

Conclusion:

The ammeter and voltmeter worked well and were linearly related with the actual values
of the currents and voltages. There was some percentage error which can be due to the
following reasons:

 The resistance of the connecting paths made from the soldering wire added to the
errors of the circuit.
 The resistances used differed from their actual value by some factor.

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The ohmmeter had the highest amount of percentage uncertainty and the scale changes by
a reasonable amount when there is a battery variation. We have concluded that this has
happened because of the following reasons:

 The circuit already behaves as a nonlinear circuit and the use of a nonlinear
potentiometer has only added to these nonlinearities.
 The resistance of the connecting paths made from the soldering wire added to the
errors of the circuit.
 The series design of ohmmeter does not cater the 100kilo ohms range quite well.
 The D’Arsonval meter had a high full scale deflection current which resulted in short
amount for Rz, which hindered the use of a shunt potentiometer to account of zero
adjustments.

References:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShDvSfWfQkQ
 https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=shunt+ohmeter
 https://www.watelectronics.com/ohmmeter-circuit-and-types-of-ohmmeters/
 https://www.mathworks.com/help/symbolic/solve-equations-numerically.html
 http://www.tpub.com/neets/book3/7n.htm

Appendix
I =I = 4.4mA
R = 217Ω
 A.1
Ammeter Range: 0 – 100mA
I R (4.4 ∗ 10 )(217)
R = = = 9.987Ω
I−I 100 ∗ 10 − 4.4 ∗ 10
 A.2
Voltmeter Range: 0 – 50V
Sensitivity: S = = = 227.27Ω/V
. ∗
R =S∗V−R = (227.27)(50) − 217 = 11147Ω
 A.3
Ohmmeter Range: 1Ω - 100kΩ
Using a 9V battery to power the ohmmeter; E = 9V
When R (resistance to be measured) is 0 i.e. the ohmmeter probes are short:
E
I =
R +R

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 E 9
R = −R = − 217 = 1828.4545Ω
I 4.4 ∗ 10
*Potentiometer resistance
0.1R = 182.845Ω
*Fixed Ohmmeter Resistance
0.9R + R = 1862.61Ω

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