As Barry pointed out, if you use a 0.47 ohm shunt and are planning to draw 10 amps through it, the resistor will need to be rated for at least 47 watts!!!Thats a lot of wasted power!! And one big honking resistor! What you may need to do is supply a Vref for the ADC that is lower than Vcc and use a smaller shunt resistor. Or put an op-amp across a smaller shunt resistor to amplify the difference. You may need to drop the shunt down to 0.01 ohm in order to get a reasonable sized resistor. That would be a 1 watt resistor. If you drop Vref down to about 1V, then should be able to get 1 mV resolution. With a 0.01 ohm shut, that would give you about 100 mA per step. So you may still need to use an op-amp if you want better resolution.


Thats a lot of wasted power!! And one big honking resistor! What you may need to do is supply a Vref for the ADC that is lower than Vcc and use a smaller shunt resistor. Or put an op-amp across a smaller shunt resistor to amplify the difference. You may need to drop the shunt down to 0.01 ohm in order to get a reasonable sized resistor. That would be a 1 watt resistor. If you drop Vref down to about 1V, then should be able to get 1 mV resolution. With a 0.01 ohm shut, that would give you about 100 mA per step. So you may still need to use an op-amp if you want better resolution.


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