MODULE 2: CIRCUITS AND ELECTRICAL COMPONENTS

TOPIC 1: BASIC CIRCUIT CONCEPTS

LESSON 1: CIRCUIT ELEMENTS AND CONSTITUTIVE RELATIONSHIPS

Roles of Electronics in Mechatronic Devices

· Electronic design is a critical part of mechatronic design
· Electrical signals carry information between the MCU, sensors, actuators, and users
· Electrical currents also drive motors, which may be used in direct or indirect actuation of the
device

There are 3 main constitutive relationships that govern how voltage and current interact with these
primary circuit elements:

The first is Ohm's Law: The voltage drop across a resistor is equal to the current times the resistance.
The second : The time derivative of voltage across capacitor is 1 over the capacitance times the current.
The third: the time derivative of the current is 1 over the inductance times the voltage across an
inductor.

In addition to these primary circuit elements, a switch is also used often in electrical design for
mechatronic systems.
Switch Bouncing
· There's mechanical contacts underneath a switch and when switches are toggled, mechanical
contacts rebound off of each other
· This happens over very short timescales, too fast for us but not too fast for microcontroller
· MCU may see switch toggle several times very quickly - can result in unwanted behaviour

Potentiometer
· Potentiometer and rheostats are variable resistors that can be tuned to precise values.
· Useful for UI, or to adjust resistance to precise level in circuit design (resistos only come in
discrete value
Alternating Current vs Direct Current

· AC signals have sinusoidally varying voltage

· DC signals have a constant voltage over time - DC is a special case of AC with a frequency of 0

Impedance
· When dealing with AC signals, concept of resistance must be generalized to impedance
· Impedance is a generalized form of resistance that applied to AC signals - it measures the
opposition that a circuit presents to a current when an AC voltage is applied
· It describes the relationship between voltage and current when an AC signals is present

Z itself is a complex variable because the Voltage and the Current is also complex for an AC signal
Z can be broken down into its rea and imaginary parts:
· The real part, denoted as R is what we call the resistance
· The imaginary part, denoted as X is the reactance
· J is the imaginary variable

Typically, for a DC circuit we only have the real part R, and we don't have the imaginary part because we
have a DC signal. Unlike AC signal where we have both resistance and reactance

Power
· Power is a very important quantity when we're building mechatronics devices so we can manage
heat dissipation
· Power dissipated by a circuit element is the current that flows through the element multiplied by
the voltage drop across the element

Power Dissipation
· The heat generated by circuit elements depends on the power dissipated by the circuit element
· When designing circuits, must make sure that all elements can handle the expected power
dissipation - otherwise elements will overheat
· Power is measured in Watts
LESSON 2: CIRCUIT ANALYSIS AND VOLTAGE REGULATION

Kirchoff's Voltage Law

· These types of equation will help us analyze what the voltage drop across different circuit
elements, as well as the current through different elements, and the power dissipated through
different elements.

Kirchoff's Current Law

· The Kichoff's current law states that the sum of current into or out of a node is zero.
· A node is a junction between different branches of a circuit. For instance, there's a node where
I1 splits into I2 and I3
 · Kirchoff's Voltage and Current Laws are used routinely in circuit analysis to determine voltage,
current and power dissipation.

Voltage Divider

· This diagram of a voltage divider is shown where we have 2 resistors (R1 and R2) in parallel and
there's a combined voltage drop across this series connection of resistors labelled as Vin.
· If we measure the voltage drop across just the 2nd resistor R2, we can call that V2, and V2 is less
than Vin.
· We're trying to step down a voltage, so Vin will be the input voltage and V2 will be the output
voltage.

One important thing to understand about voltage divider is that we don't ever want to use a voltage
divider to power a load. It's essentially a waste of power that's available. It's only used for low-current
applications such as sensors.
Oftentimes, we won't be able to buy a resistor at a specific resistance value. So if we need tight
tolenrances, we can get a potentiometer to use for R2 and tune it until we get 500 ohm.

Voltage Regulators

· Voltage regulator can be used to power a load and take larger voltages and turn them into
smaller voltage
· They are useful for powering components like microcontrollers from a battery
· The good thing about the voltage regulators is that if a battery drains, it'll be okay because the
input voltages can be in a wide range of values
There are 2 types of voltage regulators:
· Linear Voltage Regulators

Here's an example of typical linear voltage regulator

· Switching Regulators
 This essentially switches a current path on and off at a very high rate to create a lower average
voltage output than the input.
Switching regulators are composed of capacitors and inductors and other elements to create a
smooth output voltage. It is more power efficient and generate less heat. Here's an example of a
switching regulator:

LESSON 3: AMPLIFIER CIRCUITS

Signal Amplification
Oftentimes, in mechatronic design signals will need to be amplified to be used appropriately
For instance, many sensors output voltage signals that are too small to be read by micrcontroller

When amplifying voltage signals, we typically amplify them in a linear way, where we have a certain gain
that's multiplied times the voltage Vin to produce an output amplified voltage Vout.

Operational Amplifiers
Common circuit element that's used to amplify voltage signals is called a op-amp or an operational
amplifier

· Op-amps are built from transistors, diodes, resistors and capacitors, they're used first and
foremost for signal amplification
· Op-amps are circuit components used to amplify voltage levels withi a circuit
·