Design and Development of a Cost-Effective AC/DC Current Probe for Academia

This paper presents the design and development of a high-current AC/DC current probe circuit capable of providing reliable current measurements while being affordable for students and academic researchers. The proposed current probe circuit is based on a hall-effect current transducer. The current probe circuit has two outputs-one with the range -10V to +10V for interfacing with oscilloscopes and the other being an isolated output with 0 to +3.3 V range compatible with processors for data acquisition. The design of the transducer-based circuit and associated signal conditioning network are presented and the circuit simulation is carried out. A hardware prototype of the proposed current probe circuit is developed and its performance is validated experimentally.