Quote Originally Posted by CocaColaKid View Post
Has anyone simulated a DS18B20 temperature sensor with a potentiometer before? I need to do this for a project that has 5 of them running, each with its own I/O and not running on a 1-wire bus though. All of them are running in 12-bit mode too. I'm going to use another PIC to be the fake sensors but I'm not sure how to even start to get this work properly. I know I have to load an array of 9 bytes with the first two being the temperature and the last one being the CRC.
I would suggest that trying to fake the data that would be returned by the sensors would be a nightmare. You would have to get Pic#2 to behave EXACTLY the same as a DS18B20.

I would use 5 of the real sensors as someone else suggested but strap each one to one of the aluminium clad power resistors. you could then vary the current through the resistor to adjust the temperature sensed by each individual sensor.

Many times in the past I have tried to fake data but it isnt a true test for the real world. Using the method above is still faking, but faking the environment not the hardware/software so should be much closer to a real world scenareo