Sourcing ICs to Monitor Voltage and Temperature

I would go to Maxim / Dallas Semiconductor and buy some voltage and temperature monitoring chips. You can browse through their app notes for ideas about interfacing. I²C comes to mind.

Atmel makes a great 8bit microcontroller lineup called AVR. Almost all of the chips have an 8 channel analog port (might need to use an external ADC or slave another uC to get the 15 you need.) Atmel offers a free development environment for assembly, and a nopen source AVR GCC compiler toolchain is available as a plugin. See AVR Studio, and WinAVR. Also there is a good forum with many knowlegable proffesional embedded designers that will offer suggestions called AVR Freaks. Since it is not a specific question to AVR uC itself, I suggest you post this question in the Off Topic forum; it gets a lot of traffic.

I don't want to pick a uC for you since it depends alot on what you want. If you are interrested in USB (that's a big bite!) you might want to check out the USB Key it is capable of both device and host (On The Go OTG) so might be more than you need, but check it out. If your not sure what device, host, or OTG means and you think USB is the way to go then you should read up on the USB 2.0 specification.

Instead of pointing you to a specific uC in the AVR family I would recomend you check out some of Atmels AVR application notes. There are several the apply directly to your needs.

AVR042: AVR Hardware Design Considerations

AVR120: Characterization and Calibration of the ADC on an AVR

AVR151: Setup and use of the SPI Serial Peripheral Interface guid, also has downloadable code in the appnotes page linked to in the paragraph above.

AVR306: Using the AVR UART in C Universal Asynchronous Reciever Transmitter used to do RS232 com with computer or anything else.

AVR441: Intelligent BLDC Fan Controller with Temperature Sensor and Serial Interface

this may be more than what you're after, but might help. also has code.

AVR460: Embedded Web Server you mentioned internet, there are other places to get embedded web server hardware and code. I just recieved a WS128 from SOC machines. It runs the firmware from Ethernut.de

Is that enough reading yet? I would also encourage you to take a look at the STK500. This is Atmel's very cost effective development board that supports most of the chips, and with addon boards it will support the whole AVR family.

It just dawned on me, maybe you were looking for a turnkey setup. If that's the case just mention in the Off Topic Forum that you would be interrested in someone makeing this for you. There are several guys there that do consulting or one off type work. You might want to give a little more detail, but the question you posted here is pretty informative. I can help with ideas, and will reply to your post when I see it, but cannot do a job like this at this time.

Good luck.

After reading jowens post, I want to appologize about my previous post being addvertisy. I wasn't thinking about it. After looking it over again it does look like an Atmel add. I am sorry, that is not what I intended.

Not knowing your installation expertize or location, I recommend disscussing your needs with Invensys-Prichett. They've installed a system in my plant to monitor and control the HVAC system. I'm sure they could at least point you in the right direction. I try to remain impartial to advertizing, but in this case it may be to your benifit. Contact me through the mailbox if you would like more info.

HI!

As one person say here.... Maxim has good temperature sensors with I2C comunication.

To save in hardware i whould sugest to use temperature Actuators (some kind of temperature dependent resistors or capacitors, there are comon in the market). You can use the Voltage sensors in the PIC 18F452 (I think you will have enough for temperature sensing). Till here you have the temperature sensing.

To send the temperature sensing to the Computer I sugest the FTDI245. It is a parallel to USB comunication. Easy to use :).

You can use multiplexers to select what you want to sense and then use one Analog input on the PIC for sensing. So with one port you can multiplex the signal and with one pin (let say RA0) sense the Voltage in the actuators.

So... It is what I can sugest... cheap and easy.

There is a serial thermometer that can help you. TC77.

Just take a lock on the devices I have told you and think about how to develope such think.

Take a lock on this... I hope it help you. It is a Thermometer interface to PC.

http://www.techdesign.be/projects/017/017.htm

Saludos!

Delmar

Don't foget to separate the high power from the low power :). Some times smoke come out from the devices if you don't take care ;).