The difference between SENSORS and TRANSDUCERS and how they work

Se ti interessa guardare il nostro video in lingua italiana clicca questo link:    • Differenza fra SENSORI e TRASDUTTORI ...   • Find out more about our project: www.jaescompany.com/elearning.php?lang=en • Here are some products installed by our technicians: www.jaescompany.com/catalogo_marche.php?lang=en JAES is a company specialized in the maintenance of industrial plants with a customer support at 360 degrees, from the technical advice to maintenance, until final delivery of the industrial spare parts. Linkedin: it.linkedin.com/company/jaes-srl​ Facebook: www.facebook.com/jaescompany/ We are surrounded by electronic devices of any kind, but have you ever wondered how they know exactly what they have to do and when they have to do it in order to work properly? From smartphones to refrigerators, from computers to entire power stations, in every field of electronics, what makes circuits work properly are Sensors, devices that acquire information from the outside world and transmit it to circuits in the form of electrical signals. In this video we will see how sensors and transducers work, devices used to translate physical quantities into easier information to read on displays, a fundamental requirement in any technological field. Sensors and transducers are able to acquire information from the outside, and they are commonly classified according to the type of physical quantity they measure, for example: - a microphone is a sound sensor - a thermocouple is a temperature sensor - a photodiode is an optical sensor - a pressure meter is a pressure sensor and etc. Physical quantities are all the properties of a phenomenon or a body that can be measured, and so can be expressed quantitatively by a number. Sensors and Transducers, after detecting the values of a physical quantity, transform its variations into electrical signals. So what is the difference between Sensors and Transducers? Sensors are divided into Active or Passive. Active Sensors are able to transform a physical quantity directly into an electrical signal without needing an external power supply. Passive sensors, on the other hand, do not produce an electrical signal that can be used immediately; instead, they must be accompanied by powered electronics that will produce the correct electrical signal. The union of these two components is the Transducer. These signals are then transmitted to a controller, which reads and interprets them. Standard electrical signals are a range of electric tension (typically 0 to 5 volts, or 0 to 10 volts), or electric current (usually 4 to 20 milliamps). Now, let’s see the various parameters that Sensors and Transducers can have. First of all is the one called 'transfer function': Sensors and Transducers have an input signal and an output signal. The output signal varies as the input signal changes and is related to it by a mathematical function called the 'transfer function'. The ' transfer function' can be linear, quadratic, cubic, exponential or logarithmic. The most commonly used transducers either have a linear transfer or are operated in the range where the transfer is more linear. Linearity is, in fact, another important parameter that measures the nonlinearity error of the transfer function. Another primary parameter is the Dynamic Range (also known as the functioning range). Which is the range of input values that the transducer or sensor can operate without damage. The maximum value of the dynamic range identifies the range of the transducer. Whereas the minimum value designates the Resolution. A good sensor or transducer has a low resolution (i.e. it can detect signals of small value) and a high range, so as to have a very large dynamic range. Another crucial property is Sensitivity: The sensitivity of the transducer, is the relation between the variation of the output magnitude, and that of the input which determined it. The instrument will be very sensitive when, for the same variation in the input variable, the variation in the output is very high. Frequency, on the other hand, is the time taken by the transducer to transform the variation of the input magnitude into the output signal. It is important to note that the smaller the size of a sensor, the faster its response tends to be.

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• #transducer