Summary of BMP180 based USB atmospheric pressure monitor
This project involves developing a USB atmospheric pressure monitor using the Bosch BMP180 sensor to study its characteristics. The device uses a PIC18F2550 microcontroller for its built-in USB 2.0 interface, allowing direct communication without special drivers via USB HID. A Windows application was created to display and plot temperature and pressure readings from the sensor. The monitor is designed for accurate testing within the BMP180's pressure range of 300 hPa to 1100 hPa and was tested successfully on Windows 10.
Parts used in the USB Atmospheric Pressure Monitor:
- Bosch BMP180 sensor
- PIC18F2550 microcontroller
- USB 2.0 interface (integrated in PIC18F2550)
- Windows PC (for running display application)
We initially developed this USB atmospheric pressure monitor to study some operating characteristics of Bosch BMP180 sensor. BMP180 is low cost sensor to measuring barometric pressure and temperature. According to the data sheet this sensor can use to measure pressure ranging between 300hPa to 1100hPa. This sensor is introduced couple of years back but still it is popular due to lower cost and simplicity.
We did this unit to test BMP180 sensor more accurately and to study it’s behaviors. This unit is based on PIC18F2550 microcontroller and the main reason to select this MCU is because of it’s built-in USB 2.0 interface.
To display sensor calibration data and it’s readings we did small windows application. This application display and plot temperature and pressure readings captured from the BMP180 sensor.
