Help Wanted!

[Bren G]

I am working on a scene and am in desperate need of anyone who understands electronics well. Thinks like circuit boards, electricity, capacitors and the like. Ideally, one who has experience with how sensors (ie pressure, heat, gas types) work.

The gig doesn't pay well but I can offer my undying gratitude in lieu of payment.

BG

 

[msstice]

If you write it out here I'm sure people will take a look. I did work with electric circuits professionally at one point. Sensors are a wide field.

 

[Wayne Mack]

I designed circuit boards in the 1980s, unfortunately that technology is likely obsolete. To focus the query a little, what is the projected timeframe for these electronics, past, present, or projected future?

The trend in electronics is to integrate as much as possible onto a custom or semi-custom IC as opposed to linking standard ICs via a circuit board. ICs require a mechanical connection to a circuit board and these junctions are sensitive to flexing, vibration, and thermal expansion.

Sensors are typically mechanical in nature and require a wired connection to the remainder of the electronics. Mechanical devices and physical connections have a higher likelihood of failure than IC substrates. I think it would be feasible to project migration of some mechanical sensors into IC substrate alternatives.

Pressure sensors could be integrated into circuits by having substrates compressed, resulting in changes in resistance and capacitance. Thermal expansion could also be be measured in this way. In space, however, bleeding heat may be a problem and it may require separating the sensor from the remainder of the circuitry via wiring so that the ambient temperature changes are not masked. I do not know, but I would presume local gas analysis would need to rely on a chemical reaction and a different one for each gas of interest. Electrical changes due to reactions in different parts of the sensor. The sensor would decay over time and become less and less sensitive. For remote gas detection, I believe spectral analysis would be used and I really cannot speak to that.

I'm sort of throwing ideas at the wall. Am I getting near the areas of interest?

 

[tinkerdan]

This might depend on what you mean to do with the information.
Meaning:
Do you want to describe how the sensors are made to detect and react to specific forces or fluids or atmosphere.
Do you want to know the material used to construct the sensor.
Or do you want to know how we construct a device to acquire the data from the sensors.
Do you want to know how the sensor uses voltage/current to constantly sense the changes while sending out voltage in response to the changes
And then do you want to know how the voltage is acted upon by the data acquisition device to convert that to something that can be resolved into data points waveforms and spectral analysis.

The company I work for makes a data device with accelerometers inside to measure impact, velocity, vibration. We also have external connectors for specific pressure and seismic sensors and strain gauges(I don't know of any use for fluids or gas) . I don't have background in all the physics necessary to explain how everything works and I'm a bit sketchy on the math used to convert the data to all the various graphs-

My job was to take someone engineers schematic and construct the electronics used to convert all the collected voltage output into raw data that is stored in memory chips for latter download into a program that takes the raw data processes that to create all the spreadsheets and graphs.

If you look at the data sheets for the sensors you should be able to find some information about how they work and some hints about how to set up the electronics to acquire the resulting voltage/current coming out of the sensor. You might even be able to extrapolate from those to what some future developments might improve them.

I'm not sure how valuable it might be to go into how the voltage is then converted, or if it is important to your story. A majority of the sensors we are using have all gone digital and are in some ways more robust(meaning they don't need constant calibration to determine if they are working properly--they will either work or they won't.) It sort of sucks because a major portion of income for us is the recals.

However, with my limited knowledge, I could probably look at what you have to see if it reads logically. Not sure what else you might want to know. However if you want to delve deep into the physics involved; you might have to pay a minimum of 150.00 US dollars per hour to hire a consulting engineer. I don't have all the background for really deep and or esoteric conditions.

When it comes to that type of data acquisition there is almost a certainty that no two tests have all the same conditions.
They can be looking for damage boundaries that might be high impact or low impact over a long period or even vibration resonance that if sustained long enough can damage a product.

Anyway, if you could be more specific about what you want critiqued or what advice you need: that would be helpful.

It could be beyond my scope, though I have a sphere of people to converse with--until they decide they need to be paid for that information.