Resistive sensors configured as Wheatstone bridges are primarily used to sense pressure, temperature or loads. An external A/D converter (ADC) and a digitally Programmable Gain Amplifier (PGA) can easily be used to convert the difference voltage from these resistor bridge sensors to usable digital words for manipulation by the microcontroller. When the PGA is used in this system, the other channels of the MCP6S2X can be used for other sensors without an increase in signal conditioning hardware or PICmicro ® microcontroller I/O pin consumption. The multiplexer and high-speed con- version response of the PGA/Analog-to-Digital (A/D) conversion allows a differential input signal to be sam- pled and converted in the analog domain and then subtracted in the digital domain with the microcontroller.M AN251 Bridge Sensing with the MCP6S2X PGAs Author: Bonnie C. Baker BRIDGE DATA ACQUISITION Microchip Technology Inc. SYSTEM An application circuit for this type of sensor environment INTRODUCTION is shown in Figure 1. Resistive sensors configured as Wheatstone bridges In this circuit, the bridge is excited by a voltage source are primarily used to sense pressure, temperature or (VSEN). This reference……