INA219 + powersupply

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giorgio_new
 
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Joined: Mon Apr 06, 2015 9:56 am

INA219 + powersupply

Post by giorgio_new »

Hello, I have bought the Adafruit INA219 in order to measure a device's current/amperes/wattage. It is supplied by a 12 Volt/6 Amps power supply and a DC2DC step down converter, that outputs 5Volt/5Ampere. Because I need to solder terminal strips (https://www.ebay.com/itm/30Pcs-2-Pin-Sc ... 3191168799) on protoboard, in order to realize the circuity, my question is, can a protoboard handle so much current? Can INA219 measure more than 3.2 Amps? Thank you...

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giorgio_new
 
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Re: INA219 + powersupply

Post by giorgio_new »

Any suggestion??

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adafruit_support_bill
 
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Re: INA219 + powersupply

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

The current handling capacity of a protoboard depends on the width and thickness of the traces. This varies considerably between manufacturers. Our perma-proto board has relatively heavy traces, but even so I would not try to put 5A through them.

However, there are a couple of approaches to handling higher current levels on a protoboard.
* You can use 2 or more traces connected in parallel so that the current load is shared between them
* You can run a jumper wire in parallel with the trace so that wire is carrying part of the current load.
* You can solder a piece of bare wire on the bottom of the board along the length of the trace to increase the current handling capacity of the trace.

To measure currents higher than 3.2A, you would need to replace the shunt resistor with a lower value resistor: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-ina ... -2973528-5
An 0.05 ohm resistor would allow you to measure up to 6.4 amps.

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