Hello, and welcome to the first part in the C2000 analog-to-digital converter video series. The Analog-to-Digital Converter, also known as the ADC, is responsible for taking in analog signals from the environment and converting them to digital signals that the C2000 device can then process. In this video, I'll be giving an introduction into the ADC peripheral in our C2000 devices.

The diagram shown here gives a high-level overview of the ADC integration on our C2000 MCUs. Our C2000 microcontrollers feature multiple ADCs on each device. These are Successive Approximation type ADCs, or SARS, which are 12 or 16-bit and operate in either single ended or differential signal mode. The 16-bit differential capable ADCs are found on our higher-performance products and provide the best sensing performance. And depending on the package, some of these input pins and reference pins may be shared across the different ADCs on the device.

Now, let's take a look specifically at the input signals going into the ADCs. They're named for the resource that's mapped to the pin. So for instance, ADC input A1 corresponds to channel 1 of ADC-A. And taking a look at another example, the C6 pin will go to channel 6 of ADC-C. Depending on the package, multiple ADCs are mapped to the same pin. So taking a look at the A2/C9 pin, channel 2 of ADC-A and channel 9 of ADC-C both occupy that pin.

These can then be configured in software depending on if you want to take the signal into ADC-A or ADC-C. Remember that these are fully independent ADCs, meaning that you have the ability to do such things as configure the ADCs to have different time domains or to realize simultaneous sampling using common triggers. For these multi-routed ADC pins, there's also use cases where you would want to route the input signal to both ADCs, so for example, a safety type scenario where you would like to use ADC-C to verify the output of ADC-A.

And just as a note, there's no isolation between the ADC inputs on multi-map pins, so be sure to configure the ADC accordingly if you're wanting to sample a specific ADC instance. Moving on, let's look at the reference voltage of the ADC. The full-scale range, which defines the voltage over which the ADC converts, is determined by these two voltage reference pins VREFHI and VREFLO.

Essentially, this is the voltage supplied by the VREFHI minus the voltage supplied by VREFLO then divided by the number of bits in the ADC, either 12 or 16, as we have previously discussed. Our C2000 microcontrollers have an internal reference option, so instead of connecting the VREFHI and VREFLO pins to external reference voltages, you can instead tie these pins off and make use of the reference voltage supplied internally within our device. That reference can be either of a full-scale range of 2.5 volts or 3.3 volts. This helps in reducing costs if those internal voltage references are adequate for your system.

Additionally, it's worth noting that our ADCs are very flexible, and you can customize the reference for each ADC. For instance, you can connect ADC-A an external reference voltage, and then configure ADC-B or ADC-C to use the internal reference voltage option. That concludes the ADC integration section of our ADC series. To end off this ADC overview, I've noticed some helpful resources that TI provides to help you expand your knowledge on the ADCs peripheral. You can then visit our training modules located at C2000 Academy or deep dive into specific ADC topics with these app notes.