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US 6,747,463 B2Granted
Moisture meter
AssigneeRynhart Research Limited
InventorsAlan Rynhart, Sean Fallon, James McIlroy
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A moisture meter (1) has a capacitive sensing circuit (11-16) feeding into a digital control circuit having a microcontroller (17). Input buttons (20, 22, 23) allow a user to select a material being surveyed. They also allow the user to instruct the meter (1) to hold a particular reading. This allows it to be more conveniently read. The output of the digital control circuit is fed via an ADC (18) to a moving coil meter (4). This provides an easy-to-read display in which trends as the meter (1) is moved across a surface are easy to track.
Claims13
A moisture meter comprising:
- a hand-held housing on which are mounted a user input interface, a user output interface, and a moisture sensor for sensing moisture in a solid material upon contact with the solid material;
- a digital control circuit within the housing for processing output signals from said moisture sensor and for generating and storing moisture measurements;
- and
- the output interface comprising a digital to analogue converter (DAC) connected to the digital control circuit, and an analogue display device for providing an analogue moisture display indicating a moisture trend in response to outputs of the digital to analogue converter, wherein
- the input interface allows user selection of a hold function, and
- the digital control circuit locks a current reading in response to user selection of the hold function at the input interface.
3 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.