I have a little RC-4 temperature logger which has been a really handy device for ensuring that our freezers are cold enough, but no colder.
The RC4 has an internal sensor and is supplied with an external sensor that plugs into a 2.5mm TS jack on the side.
This article explores an alternative sensor that could be embedded in equipment of interest. The sensor is a NTC thermistor.
Firstly, I found that none of the 2.5mm TS plugs I had connected to the RC4 properly, but the T-R of a TRS plug worked reliably.
The display was observed with two 0.1% precision resistors and the thermistor characterised.
Above, it looks like nominally a 110k/B=4200 thermistor… which is a little unusual. 100k thermistors with B=3950 and 4200 are fairly easy to obtain though.
Above is a chart of the error in using the two commonly available thermistors. At low temperatures the 100k/4200 isn’t too bad, around 60° the 100k/3950 is better.
It is a simple matter in Excel to correct readings made with a different thermistor. Here is a VBA function to perform the conversion.
Function temp2temp(ft, ft0, fr0, fb, tt0, tr0, tb)
'function to correct temperature reading to a different thermistor
r = Exp((1 / (ft + 273.15) - 1 / (ft0 + 273.15)) * fb) * fr0
temp2temp = 1 / (1 / (tt0 + 273.15) + Log(r / tr0) / tb) - 273.15
End Function
You could squeeze all this into a cell formula if you wished to avoid using a VBA function.
Above is an example measurement run made with a 100k/3950 sensor (Indicated) and the corrected data in brown.
Last update: 27th February, 2016, 9:22 PM
