DEVELOPMENT OF A HARDWARE–SOFTWARE COMPLEX FOR READING ANALOG SIGNALS FROM GAS FLOW SENSORS WITH DATA TRANSMISSION VIA UARTFOR COMPUTER PROCESSING SYSTEMS

Abstract

The paper addresses the development of software and hardware tools for reading analog signals from sensors in the measuring channels of gas meters, followed by data transmission via the UART interface for accumulation, storage, and further processing in computer-based systems. A functional structure of the microcontroller system software is proposed using the microcontroller developed by Microchip Technology, namely the ATmega328PU, to perform analog-to-digital conversion of signals obtained from gas flow measurement transducers.

A dedicated software module for continuous data acquisition has been developed based on the internal analog-to-digital converter of the microcontroller, which ensures stable sampling of low-frequency analog signals under real operating conditions. The acquired measurement data are transmitted through the UART communication interface to a computer processing environment, where they are accumulated, preprocessed, and stored in CSV format for subsequent statistical analysis and visualization.

Special attention is paid to the analysis of information losses occurring in measuring channels that utilize pulse-type gas flow sensors. The study demonstrates that the use of analog signal acquisition methods significantly reduces quantization and transmission errors compared to traditional pulse-based approaches. This enables improved accuracy and reliability of measurement results in computerized information and measurement systems operating under conditions of signal distortion and external interference.

The proposed approach can be applied in low-speed monitoring systems for gas consumption parameters, contributing to increased precision of measurement data acquisition and enhancing the efficiency of further digital signal processing in embedded computer engineering applications.