Posted on 9 Comments

Arduino Milliohm Meter Build

During the rebuild of the wheelchair motors for the support trolley, I found myself needing an accurate milliohm meter to test the armature windings with. Commercial instruments like these are expensive, but some Google searching found a milliohm meter project based around the Arduino from Circuit Cellar.

Circuit Diagram
Circuit Diagram

Here’s the original author’s circuit diagram, paralleling nearly all of the Arduino’s digital output pins together to source/sink the test current, an ADS1115 ADC to take more accurate readings, with the results displayed on a jellybean 128×64 OLED module. The most expensive part here is the 10Ω 0.1% 15ppm reference resistor, R9.
I decided to make some small adjustments to the power supply section of the project, to include a rechargeable lithium cell rather than a 9v PP3 battery. This required some small changes to the Arduino sketch, a DC-DC boost converter to supply 5v from the 3.7v of a lithium cell, a charger module for said cell, and with the battery voltage being within the input range of the analogue inputs, the voltage divider on A3 was removed. A new display icon was also added in to indicate when the battery is being charged, this uses another digital input pin for input voltage sensing.
I also made some basic changes to the way an unreadable resistance is displayed, showing “OL” instead of “—–“, and the meter sends the reading out over the I²C bus, for future expansion purposes. The address the data is directed to is set to 0x50.

I’ve not etched a PCB for this as I couldn’t be bothered with the messy etchant, so I built this on a matrix board instead.

Final Prototype
Final Prototype

Since I made some changes to both the software and the hardware components, I decided to prototype the changes on breadboard. The lithium cell is at the top of the image. with the charger module & DC-DC converter. The Arduino Nano is on the right, the ADC & reference resistor on the left, and the display at the bottom.
The Raspberry Pi & ESP8266 module are being used in this case to discharge the battery quicker to make sure the battery level calibration was correct, and to make sure the DC-DC converter would continue to function throughout the battery voltage range.

Matrix Board Passives
Matrix Board Passives

Here’s the final board with the passive components installed, along with the DC-DC converter. I used a Texas Instruments PTN04050 boost module for power as I had one spare.

Matrix Board Rear
Matrix Board Rear

The bottom of the board has most of the wire jumpers for the I²C bus, and power sensing.

Matrix Board Modules
Matrix Board Modules

Here’s both modules installed on the board. I used an Arduino Nano instead of the Arduino Pro Mini that the original used as these were the parts I had in stock. Routing the analogue pins is also easier on the Mini, as they’re brought out to pins in the DIP footprint, instead of requiring wire links to odd spots on the module. To secure the PCB into the case without having to drill any holes, I tapped the corner holes of the matrix board M2.5 & threaded cap head screws in. These are then spot glued to the bottom of the case to secure the finished board.

Lithium Charger
Lithium Charger

The lithium charger module is attached to the side of the enclosure, the third white wire is for input sensing – when the USB cable is plugged in a charge icon is shown on the OLED display.

Input Connections
Input Connections

The inputs on the side of the enclosure. I’ve used the same 6-pin round connector for the probes, power is applied to the Arduino when the probes are plugged in.

Module Installed
Module Installed

Everything installed in the enclosure – it’s a pretty tight fit especially with the lithium cell in place.

Meter Top Cover
Meter Top Cover

The top cover has the Measure button, and the OLED display panel, the latter secured to the case with M2.5 cap head screws.

Kelvin Clips
Kelvin Clips

Finally, the measurement loom, with Kelvin clips. These were an eBay buy, keeping things cheap. These clips seem to be fairly well built, even if the hinges are plastic. I doubt they’re actually gold-plated, more likely to be brass. I haven’t noticed any error introduced by these cheap clips so far.

The modified sketch is below:

 

9 thoughts on “Arduino Milliohm Meter Build

  1. Hi, is is possible to measure Internal Battery Resistance with this tester?

    1. Hi,

      Unfortunately no. This unit does not have a battery impedance test.

  2. #error(“Height incorrect, please fix Adafruit_SSD1306.h!”);
    arduino 1.8.7 error message ??? in line 30….?????
    thanks for answer!
    have a nice days!!

    1. Hi Aldo,

      In Adafruit_SSD1306.h

      1. uncomment #define SSD1306_128_64
      2. comment #define SSD1306_128_32
      3. comment #define SSD1306_96_16

      In the example ssd1306_128x64_i2c

      4. add #define SSD1306_LCDHEIGHT 64

      on top of

      #if (SSD1306_LCDHEIGHT != 64)
      #error(“Height incorrect, please fix Adafruit_SSD1306.h!”);
      #endif

      Hope that helps! Cheers!

  3. Hi,
    Please show the modified circuit diagram.
    Thanks.

  4. OK ……….EVERY THING IS GOING ON VERY GOOD!!!
    THANKS A LOT FOE HELP!!!!!
    HAVE A NICE DAYS!!!!

  5. Hi guys, Is it possible to use a 7 pin IPS ST7735S display in place of the 4pin? Was thinking D11, A6 and A7 could be used for the other 3?

  6. Hi DBon,

    There’s no reason why you couldn’t do that, but it would require a bit of code refactoring for the new display.

    Cheers

    1. Yeah i am familiar with the tft library but i am strugling to get anything to print to the screen at all. Ill have more of a play and see what i find. Thanks for the reply 🙂

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