by Doug Coulter » Thu Sep 23, 2010 3:12 pm
Yeah, the dinky package is cool indeed -- kinda hides the fact that you even have a uP in there. I find I more or less have to make a little PCB to handle those, though. And the price is right, these things even get used in lamp dimmers they are so cheap, for timing the triac firing. That makes the triac cheaper too, as it doesn't have to have a diac in it.
Last time I used one like this, we used one (with more pins) to do that app note Microchip has on a homebrew a/d, dual slope like a DVM. We used that to make a product that keeps track of charge going into and out of lead acid batteries for solar systems. For that, you need a couple good caps and a cmos switch, too and we used a comparator instead of one of the schmitt inputs to get to 14 bits or so resolution. Nowadays, you'd just use a cheap I2C a/d for that, which would cost less than the polypropylene caps we had to use. Those are in sot 23 packages now too, and we have some 24 bit and they also have a temperature sensor for use with thermocouples as the "cold junction" compensation.
Posting as just me, not as the forum owner. Everything I say is "in my opinion" and YMMV -- which should go for everyone without saying.