Making an isolated hall effect current sensor with ring terminals
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simple isolated current sensor
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Needed an isolated current sensor to sense the current in my cell level test fixture. Found a neat part made by alegro that has a compensated hall effect sensor with built in current shunt. Unlike a regular current shunt where the resistance of the shunt produces a voltage when current flows through it, this device has an integrated hall effect circuit built in. The device comes in many flavors, with unipolar or bipolar sensing up to +-150A. The best part is that the hall circuit is electrically isolated from the current path. The down side was that the device was designed to mount on a PC board, so attaching it to the big 1/4" studs that I required was dificult. I carefully straightened the heavy copper buss bar leads and sawed a slot in some heavy 1/4" ring terminals. The terminals were soldered to the straightened leads, and the fine hall effect wires were connected to three wires and strain relieved with some hot glue.
Works like a charm.
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