The micro controller I am using (AVR) only has 1 ADC port, but I have 6 analog peripherals, essentially potentiometers. Since I want to use these 6 different signals on 1 pin, I thought about a design for a multiplexing circuit, but I haven't ever done any analog stuff before, so was wondering if anyone could offer some help.
I was planning on putting an NPN transistor and a diode between the potentiometer and the ADC pin of the microcontroller. I would then use 2 digital I/O pins from the microcontroller to select one of the 6 pots. I was thinking that the diode would prevent any of the current from the active pot going to another pot and thus corrupting the signal. Is that along the right lines?
If it helps, I am only dealing with voltages from +5V to +0V. These signals will not be changing that rapidly either nor do they need to be sampled all that frequently (maybe 10-100 samples per second)