News and New Products

Temp sensor cools your act

By Bill Schweber -- EDN, 8/21/2003

Though you may often overlook it, internal temperature measurement is critical in many designs. One device for the function, the dual-channel ADT7461 from Analog Devices, checks your processor or PC temperature and employs a technique to cancel parasitic resistance errors. It supports the SMBus serial interface at 64 conversions/sec to a rate as low as 16 sec/conversion, and alert mode handles undertemperature and overtemperature limits. The eight-pin SOIC and μSOIC has on-chip and remote sensors and automatically compensates for as much as 1 kΩ of parasitic resistance, including leads, pc-board tracks, and similar parts, between the remote sensor and the system circuitry by switching current sources.

Default temperature range is 0 to 127°C, and you can select extended range of –40 to +191°C. The remote sensor has resolution of 0.25°C and accuracy to 1°, and the local sensor has resolution and accuracy of 1 and 3°C, respectively. The ADT7461 sells for $1.70 (1000).

Analog Devices Inc, 1-800-262-5643, www.analog.com.