Introduction: Obtain Temperature Data From on Board Temperature Sensor of Raspberry Pi Pico

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The internal temperature sensor that comes with the Raspberry Pi Pico is connected to one of the ADCs or Analog-to-Digital Converters. The ADC pin supports a range of values, which is determined by the input voltage applied to the pin.

In the RP2040 Pico Board, the ADC pins support 12-bits, which means that the value can go from 0 to 4095. But the MicroPython code can scale the ADC values to a 16-bit range. So we effectively get the range from 0 to 65535. The microcontroller works at 3.3 V, which means that an ADC pin will return a value of 65535 when 3.3 V is applied to it or 0 when there is no voltage. We can obtain all the in-between values when the voltage applied to the pin is between 0 and 3.3 V.

Supplies

1. Raspberry Pi Pico

Step 1: Connect Pi Pico With PC

Connect the Pi Pico with a computer using a USB cable.

Step 2: Open Thonny or Any IDE Write the Code, Save It As Tempinbuilt.py and Run It

import machine
import utime
 
sensor_temp = machine.ADC(4)
conversion_factor = 3.3 / (65535)
 
while True:
    reading = sensor_temp.read_u16() * conversion_factor 
    temperature = 27 - (reading - 0.706)/0.001721
    print("Temperature: {}".format(temperature))
    utime.sleep(2)

Attachments

Step 3: Output