The TDC-GP30 is an Ultrasonic Flow Converter which can be used for water metering in communities, cities or industrial applications. At Electronica we showcased how it can be used in cost-effective non legal for trade applications with small spool piece.
ams solutions for ultrasonic flow meters measure water, heat and gas flows. Based on time-to-digital conversion technology for precision time-of-flight measurement, the ultrasonic flow converters operate the analog front end to drive and read transducers, detect the zero crossing in the receive signal and measure the travel time of the ultrasonic bursts. The whole front-end is optimized for ultra-low power operation. Besides pure front-end devices, ams also offers flow converters which integrate a low-power 32-bit CPU to calculate the flow. Some are supplied with the flow firmware on-chip. The devices communicate via SPI, but for stand-alone applications the output may be provided via a pulse interface.
| Product | Datasheet | Demoboard | |
|---|---|---|---|
| TDC-GP21 | TDC-GP21 is a 2-channel TDC with additional analog elements like extended fire-pulse generator, zero-cross detection and analog switches for simplifying the use in ultrasonic flow meter applications. An optimized power managements of the various units brings down the operating current to a few µA at 2Hz measuring rate. | ||
| TDC-GP22 | TDC-GP22 is a 2-channel TDC with additional analog elements like extended fire-pulse generator, zero-cross detection and analog switches for simplifying the use in ultrasonic flow meter applications. The addition first-hit detection makes TDC-GP22 suitable for high dynamic applications as ultrasonic water meters. An optimized power managements of the various units brings down the operating current to a few µA at 2Hz measuring rate. | ||
| TDC-GP30-F01 | TDC-GP30-F01 is a complete ultrasonic flow metering solution, including the flow calculation. It drastically simplifies the design of ultrasonic heat and water meters and is the necessary step for compact energy-saving ultrasonic water meters. The ultra-low current capabilities allow the use of standard 2/3 AA or AA lithium thionyl chloride batteries at 6-8 Hz measuring frequency even in the water meter version. The TDC-GP30-F01 firmware does the linearization and temperature compensation based on spool piece specific calibration data and completes the system-on-chip approach. |