Originally Posted by
kufman
I am currently measuring the voltage right at the connector to the ESC since it is also my current measurement board. This way, I don't have to move it with each new ESC I use. It is true that I don't account for losses in the connector and the few inches of wire that go into the ESC. I make the negative lead the common for my entire system.
I could probably bring my Minima to work and measure the analog with some of the voltage calibrators I have here. I never thought about the linearity in the past because I was always using the same ic. The ra4m1 does claim to have a higher bit resolution than the 328. Up to 14 bits I think if you configure it that way. I use analog filtering on the signals just as they enter the micro controller. Super simple, single pole, RC filters. Usually the 3db point is around 80Hz. I do terminate unused ADC channels on the Nano which reduces noise a fair amount.
The Nano's ADC is extremely linear. As said, its resolution being 10bit isn't good, but you can oversample it. The ADC on the Nano is ~10000 samples / sec. For the Minima, I can create a simple circuit to read voltage and use bench supply to output different voltages from 0V-5V and see how the Minima reads it. I have one that I haven't really messed with. Time is not on my side though.
As to the voltage reading of the battery, what I am suggesting is to remove the voltage sense from the ground plane and measure the potential difference through a differential amplifier. You can still filter the inputs with the op-amp by creating a 2nd order filter, or you can filter the output of the op-amps with a 1st order RC filter like you are doing now. But separating the voltage sense from the ground plane allows you to measure the true voltage at the point where you are measuring it without worrying about how the current is affecting the reading. Like I said, this may be overboard for a dyno, and if you are just breadboarding this it would be difficult to achieve anyway. Speaking of, do you plan on building your own pcb and break out the mcu from the dev board at some point? If so, that is a consideration for the mcu choice.