Can you feed in an external voltage reference to the Quadra DAC product? If yes, would the gain control still work? With the op amp buffered outputs, can the Quadra DAC go down to true zero?
Can you feed in an external voltage reference to the Quadra DAC product? If yes, would the gain control still work? With the op amp buffered outputs, can the Quadra DAC go down to true zero?
Great question, The DAC IC family used on the Quadra DAC (AD5686/5/4) starts with the internal reference on by default, but by changing Internal Reference Setup Register (DB0) you can turn off the internal reference and feed in an external reference. By default the DB0 bit is 0 (internal reference on), switch it to 1 (internal reference off) to use an external reference. Max voltage for an external reference is 5V.
Yes the Quadra DAC Can go down to 0V. Below is a curve from the DAC IC datasheet showing the output voltage range with a gain setting of 2. You can see in the curve 0V output is possible but only at low current outputs. With higher current outputs you can outputing 0V is not possible (page 14 datasheet).
Hope this answered your questions, please let me know if you have any other quesitons on the QuadraDAC!
