Other Voltage dividers

Evening folks.

I'm working on a sensor display for my car, using an arduino.

As far as I can tell, I need a voltage divider to make it all play ball.

However! I'm not sure whether I have a code issue or a hardware issue at the moment, and since voltage dividers are new to me, I was hoping someone could give me a kick in the right direction.

At present the layout is

Arduino 5V - Capacitor - R1 - R2 - Sensor+

I have a connection to one of the analogue pins on the Arduino just after the capacitor.

However, diddly squat happens on the arduino when the temp sensor is introduced to hot water.

I've been referring to these projects;

https://github.com/speeddragon/Arduino-CarSensorDashboard

https://www.instructables.com/id/VDO-Oilpressure-sensor-for-Arduino/

Mostly the github project, though.

How badly have I screwed up the voltage divider?

 

Do you have a photo of the layout and the code?

 

The code is on this page;

https://github.com/Nirach-N09/Arduino-CarSensorDashboard - I'd paste, but it's kind of long and there are other parts in the lib folder.

Excuse the mess, since it's all up in the air at the moment I haven't been really giving it my all in terms of layout and planning;

 

A schematic of what you've put together would make this a lot easier! Are you follwing this one?

 

Agreed - but my electrical schematic reading skills aren't great, and drawing one would probably make it far worse

I think I followed that one, yes, but as mentioned my electronics skills are.. questionable at best when not dealing with simple stuff like LEDs.

 

Can we see the other side too.

 

Sure, it's not particularly interesting though, in that the runs are basically straight;

 

It's hard to tell from the photo but it doesn't look like you've broken the track between the terminals of the components, ergo current will just bypass the resistors as if they're not present.



Also, when working with stripboard I always run a knife (or serrated edge) between the tracks to make sure there are no unintentional solder bridges between the tracks.

 

That is almost certainly what it is.

 

Grab yourset a stripboard cutter, usually only a fiver, but its be far the easiest way to cut the tracks on stripboard

 

Well, now the blind pig in a thunderstorm soldering has been corrected I'm getting consistent voltage readings across all three connections.

I did have to lose the capacitors, though. I didn't have 10µf to hand and tried 100, that seems to have crippled any output from the Arduino.

However, the code is now also not working quite how I expected it to, in that it's not reading right. But that's a problem for another day, as I'm tired of looking at this project for now.

 

Electronics can be fun but it can also be a royal PITA when it comes to problem solving. At least you're in a better place now to proceed when you're ready for it!

 

I spend weeks debugging a LED driver circuit I'd designed, went through ALL the maths for the regulator by hand several time and began to doubt my sanity when it turned out 3 of the IC's I'd recieved were DOA! WEEKS! I was loosing my mind!