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How to calculate series resistor to provide a certain voltage to a pin?

I (theoretical physicist, all the basic theory, no further electrical engineering background)
am just diving into Arduino and I have a very basic question:

asked

I am playing with a Zilog ePIR motion detector

(https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9587) in hardware mode. I would like to use a
fixed resistor to supply a voltage of, say 0.2V to Pin 3 (DLY), to set a delay for the
motion detection switch-off (the whole thing runs on 3.3V). From Kirchhoff's voltage
law I would think that I need the internal resistance of the module to calculate a ratio
with the series resistor. I am getting R = R_Module*(3.3V-0.2V)/0.2V. However: I don't
know any internal resistance, nor can I measure any between GND and DLY. How do I
calculate the needed resistor? Am I thinking totally wrong?

active

I am using the circuit from http://macherzin.net/article17-Arduino-Sensoren-InfrarotePIR Bonus question: How did the author know that he needs an 80 Ohm resistor if he
connects the module to 5V?

3 years ago

viewed 813 times

1 year ago

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voltage

resistors

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asked Aug 6 '12 at 19:22

Related
mcandril
140

Voltage dividers and resistors

Thanks to all, high impedance is indeed something that is not common in Physics courses, so I
really missed that. Well learned something today :) mcandril Aug 6 '12 at 20:40

add a comment

Resistor values calculation: how to arrive at

these values? (Make: Electronics example 10)

3 Answers

active

oldest

votes

If you read the section regarding DLY in the datasheet for your sensor you'll see that it
suggests using a simple resistive divider to set the delay. Normally, you want to drive
your ADC with a low output impedance compared to your ADC's input impedance. Your
resistive dividers output impedance would be R1 || R2 (assuming your voltage source is
perfect with no output impedance) - so approximately 580 for the circuit below - this
should be OK.
But let's suppose you want to set the delay to 15 min - which corresponds to 1.8V from
the datasheet. To drop 1.8 V with the divider, R2 would have to be around 5.6 k. The
output impedance would then be 3.5 k. This might cause problems if your ADC's input
impedance is just 10 k.
But since the datasheet suggests a resistive divider is OK and also states that the input
impedance is high, I think you'll be OK with the following (don't quote me on this,
though!)

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This means something like this:

R2 will drop a voltage of 0.2 V across it. Rest of the voltage (3.3 - 0.2) will be dropped
on R1. If your input voltage is 5V instead of 3.3, R2 will have to be around 400 Ohms.
If you do have issues due to the output impedance you can buffer the output of the
voltage divider with a unity gain buffer. A unity gain buffer has a very low output
impedance and should drive your ADC very well.
share improve this answer

answered Aug 6 '12 at 19:59

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Saad
2,300

27

55

Thanks! Another small question: Do I want to connect DLY to GND if I want to achive 0V?
(Probably using a pulldown resistor then?) mcandril Aug 6 '12 at 20:50
@mcandril yes, I believe so. Saad Aug 6 '12 at 21:04
@mcandril You can connect it directly. I don't think you will need a pulldown. Saad Aug 6 '12 at
21:11

Apply Kirchhoff's law

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As you correctly figured out, using a single series resistor to drop voltage requires
knowing the resistance of the input it will be driving. Not only that, it requires that
resistance to be fairly constant. You generally don't know or can't rely on either of those
things.
Somewhere there should be a spec for input resistance of the pin you are trying to
drive. Sometimes that is defined in terms of maximum leakage current instead of a
resistance. In either case, that is usually only a minimum resistance (or maximum
leakage current).
You need to add a second resistor to ground to form a voltage divider, with the output
impedance of the divider being significantly less than the minimum resistance of the input
so that the input resistance doesn't matter. For example, let's say you have a 0-5 V
digital output. If you put 1 k in series with that followed by 2 k to ground, the output
will be 0-3.33 V unloaded. Converting this to a Thevenin equivalent voltage source, you
have a 3.33 V source with a impedance of 1k//2k = 667 . As long as the effective
resistance of whatever this divider is driving is significantly more (like 10 k) than the
667 , the voltage will be predictable and about 0 to 3.3 V.
share improve this answer

answered Aug 6 '12 at 19:46

Olin Lathrop
168k

17

177

419

add a comment

If you look at the datasheet for the module you can see that the pin 3 of the device is
considered high impedence:

This means that you can assume that very little current will enter this pin (ie, a high
resistance in the pin).

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To achieve the voltage you desire of 0.2 V on the pin, just create a simple voltage
divider circuit with resistors:

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Again, since the datasheet says the pin is high impedance, you can assume no

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Again, since the datasheet says the pin is high impedance, you can assume no
appreciable amount of current will flow into it. Using the mighty Kirchhoff you can now
get some approximate resistance values to achieve the voltage division you need.
Vo= Vin*R2/(R1+R2)
Choose a value of R1 or R2 that you have on hand, and see if you have another resistor
for the remaining one that will closely give the desired voltage.
share improve this answer

edited May 28 '14 at 21:53

answered Aug 6 '12 at 19:56

justing
1,442

20

Vo = Vin*R2/R1+R2 EM Fields May 26 '14 at 19:36

@EMFields Fixed, Thanks. justing May 28 '14 at 21:53
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