Improving Standards of Health & Safety Management in the Quarrying Sector

A microcontroller for use in battery charging and monitoring applications is disclosed. The microcontroller includes a microprocessor and various front-end analog circuitry including a slope A/D converter and a multiplexer for allowing a plurality of analog input signals to be converted to corresponding digital counts indicative of signal level. The microcontroller further includes an on-chip temperature sensor, used in conjunction with the A/D converter, to monitor the temperature of the microcontroller. The temperature sensor generates and uses a differential voltage that is obtained across the base-emitter functions of two compatible bipolar transistors having dissimilar emitter areas. This differential voltage is proportional to temperature and may be sampled by the A/D converter to obtain a digital count indicative of the temperature of the microcontroller.