Zener Diode for microcontroller pin protection

Submitted by Rales on

Hi I want to know how to use zener diode to protect my microcontroller intput pin from Over voltage.

I have an Arduino running at 5V and it has to read analog voltage from a 12V sesnor. So I used a potential divider circuit to convert that 0-12V sensor to 0-5V sensor and hooked it to the Analof pin of Arduino (A0). Everything is working well and I am about to design my PCB. But I wanted to protect the arduino analog pin from getting damaged is the 12V accidently reaches the Arduino pin.

I know that I have to use a zener diode may be 4.7V zener, but I do not know where exactly to use this zener diode also do I need to use a zener resistance as well if yes what value? Is there any other way to protect my pin from over voltage?

Hi Rales, Connect the zener diode as shown in the figure above.Hope it helps!!!!

 

  Joined August 22, 2019      125
Thursday at 12:29 PM

Zener diode has a leakage current that will affect the analog reading...

Add a series resistor in addition with the voltage devider.

Don't worry, microcontroller has inbuilt esd protection that will work and the series resistor will limit the current.

  Joined February 12, 2018      696
Monday at 02:11 PM