ProtoCentral FDC1004 capacitance sensor breakout board

If you don't already have one, you can buy the ProtoCentral FDC1004 breakout board from:

• ProtoCentral(Worldwide)

• ProtoCentral USA

The FDC1004 is a single-chip IC for capacitance measurement for application including proximity sensing and liquid level sensing. This is based on the concept of measuring capacitance of an electrode with respect to ground.

This breakout board contains everything to connect it to an Arduino's I2C pins and it can be connected to any other platform with support for I2C two-wire interfaces.

We have made several cool projects with it including proximity sensing and liquid-level sensing from the outside of a tank. Check out our Hackster page for the detailed project description.

Features

• Breakout contains the Texas Instruments FDC1004 IC
• 4 channel measurement
• On-board 3.3V voltage regulator
• Output data rates up to 400 Samples/second
• Easy-to-use I2C interface

Specifications

• Capacitance measurement range: +/- 15 pF
• Resolution: 0.5 fF
• Maximum offset capacitance: 100 pF

Includes

• 1x ProtoCentral FDC1004 Capacitance Sensor Breakout Board
• 1x Set of breakaway headers

Repository Contents

• /software - Arduino library and example sketch
• /hardware - All Eagle design files (.brd, .sch)

Connecting the breakout to an Arduino

Wire the FDC1004 breakout to an Arduino Uno using the following connections.

Arduino   FDC1004 board
-------   -------------
     5V <-> VCC
    GND <-> GND
     A4 <-> SDA
     A5 <-> SCL

Uploading Arduino Sketch For FDC1004 breakout

1. Open the Arduino IDE to load the embedded code for Protocentral_FDC1004.

2. Click on File -> Open and Browse the .ino code for Arduino from Protocentral_FDC1004-master\arduino and export the application to Arduino.

3. Open serial terminal window, you should see the capacitance values obtained from the FDC1004 Breakout Board.

License Information

This product is open source! Both, our hardware and software are open source and licensed under the following licenses:

Hardware

All hardware is released under Creative Commons Share-alike 4.0 International.

You are free to:

• Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
• Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially. The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.

Under the following terms:

• Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
• ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.

Software

All software is released under the MIT License(http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT).

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Please check LICENSE.md for detailed license descriptions.