I have noticed I cannot measure the current flowing through my arduino on a breadboard circuit because it does not function with an ammeter in series with its voltage supply. How would I go about measuring current through the arduino?
I am not looking to make an arduino voltmeter, just measure current into an arduino chip.
What sort of bread boarded circuit do you have?
With a cheap DMM I just measured the current flowing through a bread boarded Atmega328 (VCC and AVCC) as well as a modified Uno with a number of shields and components attached.
Feed the circuit through different resistors.
Measure the voltage drop across the resistor then calculate the current. I=V/R
Try 100, 10, or 1 ohm.
m34tcode:
I have noticed I cannot measure the current flowing through my arduino on a breadboard circuit because it does not function with an ammeter in series with its voltage supply. How would I go about measuring current through the arduino?I am not looking to make an arduino voltmeter, just measure current into an arduino chip.
If you are using a DMM, multimeter to measure currents, it is probably because you have blown a fuse in your DMM. That happens very/too often with multimeters. And then the current does not flow through your meter. The volt meter function does work, so this is hard to notice.
Almost every $1 non-working DMM we pick up from the local used tool guy has at least one blown fuse - it's always in there because of that, or the batteries leaked and crapped up the contacts. You can see how it happens - the person leaves it on amps, but think;s they're measuring voltage and puts it across a supply, and there goes your fuse.
I'm sure the DMM manufacturers are aware that this drives sales of replacement units - else we'd see PTC fuses, at least for the low-current setting (the one that's like 400mA).