The Adafruit Feather ecosystem is so rich with hardware diversity, we wanted to share them, one each day. Today is the Adafruit INA219 Current Sensor FeatherWing!

The INA219 FeatherWing makes power-monitoring problems a thing of the past. Instead of struggling with two multimeters, you can just use the handy INA219 chip on this breakout to measure both the high side voltage and DC current draw over I2C with 1% precision. Works with any and all Feathers! Communicates over I2C so its super-simple to use, you can even change the I2C address to have up to 4 of these Wings on one Feather.

Please Note: As of Oct 2022, due to the severe chip shortage, we’ve had to update this design to use either the INA219A or INA219B and in SOT-23 or SOIC package – whatever we are able to get on the market! The A version is ±1% total max current measurement error over the entire temp range (±0.5% max at 25*C) and the B version is ±0.5% total max current measurement error over the entire temp range (±0.3% max at 25*C). Overall functionality is otherwise the same.

Many current-measuring devices are only good for low side measuring. That means that unless you want to get a battery involved, you have to stick the measurement resistor between the target ground and true ground. This can cause problems with circuits since electronics tend to not like it when the ground references change and move with varying current draw. This chip is much smarter – it can handle high side current measuring, up to +26VDC, even though it is powered with 3.3V. It will also report back that high side voltage, which is great for tracking battery life or solar panels.

A precision amplifier measures the voltage across the 0.1 ohm, 1% sense resistor. Since the amplifier maximum input difference is ±320mV this means it can measure up to ±3.2 Amps. With the internal 12 bit ADC, the resolution at ±3.2A range is 0.8mA. With the internal gain set at the minimum of div-8, the max current is ±400mA and the resolution is 0.1mA. Advanced hackers can remove the 0.1 ohm current sense resistor and replace it with their own to change the range (say a 0.01 ohm to measure up 32 Amps with a resolution of 8mA).

USE

The Adafruit INA Current Sensor FeatherWing Guide provides all the details and use examples.