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I have a device that can have different things plugged into it. I'm trying to use a resistor on these things to uniquely identify the thing. That is, if I plug in Thing A, I can read the resistance as 100Ohms and know that it's a Thing A. If I plug in Thing B, I can read the resistance as 200Ohms and know that it's a Thing B. I know resistance varies with temperature, and tolerance, so I want to have some wiggle room on each unique code.

I'm using a voltage divider and an ADC to measure the resistance. Assuming I have a constant 3V input, a 12 bit ADC reference of 2.5V, I will use resistors with a 1% tolerance, and I want as many unique codes as possible, with a small gap in between each, how do I calculate how many unique codes I can get?

I was first thinking that I could use a 2k resistor, and then the second resistor could be anything from 0 to 10k. With 4095 steps in 12 bits that means .6mV per step. At 1% tolerance, that means the top bin could be anything from 9900 to 10100, so 200 ohms wide. That's only 80 bins, though. However, a 100 ohm resistor would only vary from 99-101, or 2 ohms wide, so a linear formula is clearly not appropriate.

How can I figure out the correct number of unique bins that I can reliably detect?

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  • \$\begingroup\$ A DMM can measure resistance < 0.1% over 5 decades with stepped current sources. how many bins do you need? To calculate best-case accuracy, divide the maximum INL error by 2N, where N is the number of bits \$\endgroup\$
    – D.A.S.
    Commented Dec 29, 2016 at 23:42
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    \$\begingroup\$ If you plug in anything, you have to grant wide safety margins to reliably detect anything. Contact resistance varies a lot, could be Ohms, and that depends on insertion force and humidity, too. \$\endgroup\$
    – Janka
    Commented Dec 30, 2016 at 0:02
  • \$\begingroup\$ You may want to use unique ID chips as the DS2401 instead. They even come in a canned fashion (DS1990) which you could glue or weld to the things you want to identify. \$\endgroup\$
    – Janka
    Commented Dec 30, 2016 at 0:04
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    \$\begingroup\$ Consider using a constant current source to drive the unknown resistor instead of including the unknown R in a divider. I think you might be able to get more resolution of resistance this way. You might also want to include a built in reference resistor to calibrate the current source or resistance divider before taking each reading on the unknown R. \$\endgroup\$
    – FiddyOhm
    Commented Dec 30, 2016 at 0:19
  • \$\begingroup\$ I'm hoping for something like 200-400 bins. Janka had a good point about contact resistance, which may be an issue. I'm hoping that by being in the higher decade of resistance the few ohms from contact resistance will be insignificant. \$\endgroup\$
    – Bob Baddeley
    Commented Dec 30, 2016 at 1:18

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If you use E192 0.5% resistors then there are 192 values per decade. If you set each decade as A/D full scale (ie 2.5 V) then the values are 4096/192 apart --> 21 * 0.6 mV --> 12.6 mV apart. So easily discernable by your A/D.

  1. Test which decade a resistor is in by setting a current (or simply a series resistor) so the top value of the decade is 50% scale (1.25 V). The voltage should be between 10 and 2047. If the A/D output value is less than < 10 or > 2047 choose a higher or lower decade to test.
  2. Once you know the decade, set the measurement current to get full-scale with the largest resister in the decade. Measure the A/D value to identify the bin.

You should be able to measure at least 3-4 decades with little complexity and using a single purchased resistor giving a practical number of bins around 768.

You could do the same with E96 1% resistor values and get 384 bins in 4 decades.

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