Noisy Data from Potentiometers

Using Arduino Project Guidance
1

Hi All,

I'm new to Arduino and am trying to make a relatively simple project involving two potentiometers as input. I had a couple of questions that I was hoping someone would be able to answer.

I'm getting some slighty noisy data with the potentiometers. Right now, I have them connected to a breadboard, but plan on simplifying things and nixing the breadboard soon. Would reducing the amount of wires and breadboard solve the issues with input fluctuations? Right now, I have the knobs turned all the way up but they will bounce around by 4 or 5 on a regular basis. Is this something that usually occurs with analog input and I'll just have to smooth things out in the code? Or is there a way to smooth these out with hardware alone?

Thanks!

2

Right now, I have the knobs turned all the way up but they will bounce around by 4 or 5 on a regular basis. Is this something that usually occurs with analog input

Does the reading fluctuate at other than the upper limit? How long are the wires from the breadboard to the Arduino? From the potentiometer to the breadboard?

You could take several readings and average them, to smooth out the fluctuations.

3

Each of the wires soldered to the potentiometer is about 1 foot long—they are not jumper wires. The wires from the breadboard to the Arduino are jumpers. It seems like there's fluctuation anywhere in the range.

I'm going to end up smoothing out the values, but since my hardware knowledge is close to none at this point, I wanted to see if this is a usual occurrence or if there's something I can do to try and smooth them out through hardware alone.

4

What value are the pots? The optimal value is 10K, higher values give more noise.
You can also try putting a small capacitor (0.1uF or so) from the analogue input to the ground.

5

They're 2K Potentiometers. Sorry for the newbie question, but how where would the capacitor fit in the circuit?

6

2K is a fine value.
This is not uncommon but you should be able to do better that you are doing. It sounds like with such long wires you will befit from capacitors.

Sorry for the newbie question

No need to apologist for a newbie question, but I did tell you this already in my first reply:-

from the analogue input to the ground.

7

from the analogue input to the ground.

Or another way sf stating it would be from the pot center output to ground.

8

Thanks everyone—I'll give it a shot. Good to know that the longer the wire the more finicky the read.

9

Good to know that the longer the wire the more finicky the read.

Don't think "long wire", think "antenna" ]:smiley: