Allegro announces new products with integrated power, voltage and current monitoring and enhanced isolation

     Allegro MicroSystems announced the availability of the ACS37800, a Hall-effect power monitoring IC solution for single-phase AC and DC with a very small PCB footprint. The ACS37800 is another industry-leading innovation from Allegro, an integrated power monitoring chip that detects the power, voltage, and current of both AC and DC signals in a small SOIC16W package with an isolation rating of up to 1480 Vpk, helping to reduce the size, cost, and complexity of the overall solution.

     Shaun Milano, Director of Allegro's Current Sensors Business Unit, said: "Allegro's newly announced power monitoring chip is a transformative solution for applications such as iot devices, smart lighting, data centers and telecommunications. We have made significant improvements over the first generation of integrated solutions, adding the ability to measure AC and DC voltage, current and power simultaneously, as well as enhanced isolation capabilities. The ACS37800 greatly simplifies power measurement with its unique single-chip solution, eliminating the need for many expensive components for our customers to design their products."

     The newly launched ACS37800 enables predictive maintenance of equipment by detecting reductions in power efficiency, enabling equipment to easily track power consumption changes and optimize energy consumption, making it ideal for motor control, building automation and a variety of green industrial applications.

     The ACS37800 uses an efficient SOIC16 package that, under equal conditions, removes many components required by competing solutions, thereby further reducing PCB size and significantly reducing bill of materials (BOM) costs and complexity. For example, the ACS37800 features a 517 Vrms enhanced isolation that enables current detection independently without the need for expensive components such as photoisolators, Rogowski coils, very large current transformers, isolated operational amplifiers, or shunt resistors.

     By calculating parameters such as active, reactive and apparent power, as well as instantaneous and RMS values of current, voltage or power, the ACS37800 simplifies common power triangle measurements. In addition, the ACS37800 is able to average these parameters through multiple instantaneous measurements in one minute, avoiding inaccuracies in the case of asymmetric waveforms. These features help reduce the dependence of critical computing on microcontroller (MCU) resources.

     The flexibility and configurability of the ACS37800 allow users to program it to meet a wide range of unique application requirements. Based on the user's low noise or multi-address requirements, the designer can choose the device whose factory Settings are I2C or SPI interface. In I2C mode, the ACS37800 provides zero-crossing detection, which makes LED dimming control easier. Undervoltage/overvoltage, current/voltage gain and offset, and overcurrent trip point thresholds can be programmed via EEPROM to optimize systems from ±30A to ±180A at temperatures ranging from -40 ° C to 125 ° C.