Hi! I’m working on an arduino project that has a -12v/0v/+12 psu. +12 is fed directly into arduinos voltage regulator, so there’s also a +5v line available. I need to convert a -5v+5v signal to 0v+5v to feed it into arduinos analogue input and I’ve already mocked up a schematic in circuitjs based on an opamp that seems to do what I want. The only problem is that it needs -5v to shift the signal to be unipolar. I know that I can invert +5v using another opamp, but maybe there’s some simpler way? I’d really like to avoid adding another opamp just for this? In this schematic I used simple voltage divider to get the needed voltage, but I guess that’s not the best approach?

TLDR: I have -12v, 0v, +12v and +5v, what’s the easiest way to get -5v?

  • @grasibEnglish
    1•1 year ago

    You’re right of course. Two more questions if you don’t mind:

      1. what’s the 1k || 100k doing?
      1. if you don’t want more than 5V at the output of the OpAmp, wouldn’t it be easier to just supply the OpAmp with 5V instead of adding a shottky diode which has a forward voltage of around 0.6V? As I understand the screenshot the voltage is 5.4V at that exact point and it could theoretically raise to 5.6V.

    At the moment you’re also mixing up your + input. 10V AC + 5V DC result in 7.5V input in your sim.

    • PinkDuckOP
      1•1 year ago
      1. it does nothing 😅 I just forgot to remove it from the sim
      2. you mean like power it with 0+5v? I think it won’t work with negative input voltages then, right? and I’m using tl074 and I’m not sure that 0+5v is enough juice for it, and I use remaining 3 opamps for other stuff, so it’s not really an option for me. the sim didn’t have shottky diodes, so this measurements are not 100% accurate, but I used this approach to protect arduino inputs in another project, and it worked well. And yeah, I cranked up the input signal to +/-10v just to check the clipping, it’ll normally stay within +/-5v

      I already ordered PCB for the prototype. I hope it’ll work fine. Thanks a lot for your help :)