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The hardware/acquisition boundary

rtd-sensor starts once the best available estimate of the RTD sensing element's resistance in ohms is available. Sometimes a separate acquisition layer must produce that estimate; sometimes an instrument or RTD interface already provides it.

physical RTD
    ↓
resistance-measurement source
    ├── raw converter / ADC / electrical interface
    │       ↓
    │   acquisition handling and corrections
    │       ↓
    │   resistance in ohms
    │
    └── DMM / bridge / DAQ / RTD interface with resistance output
            ↓
        resistance in ohms
            ↓
        rtd-sensor model
            ↓
        temperature in °C

What belongs in the acquisition layer

Depending on the hardware, that may include:

  • ADC or converter register handling;
  • SPI, I²C, GPIO, or another bus;
  • excitation-current behavior;
  • reference-resistor calculations;
  • two-, three-, or four-wire topology handling;
  • lead-wire compensation;
  • converter fault detection; and
  • hardware-specific calibration.

For example, a MAX31865 integration should first use the converter's information and circuit configuration to obtain an RTD resistance estimate. That resistance can then be passed to rtd-sensor. If a laboratory DMM, bridge, DAQ, or RTD interface already provides the desired element-resistance estimate in ohms, no additional acquisition layer is required before passing it to rtd-sensor.

What rtd-sensor owns

rtd-sensor owns the mathematical RTD model layer:

  • resistance ↔ temperature conversion;
  • RTD model range and validation;
  • model sensitivity;
  • custom/calibrated model behavior;
  • RTD-specific uncertainty propagation;
  • model identity and conformance semantics.

Why keep the boundary clean?

A Pt100 model should behave the same whether the resistance came from an industrial bridge, a MAX31865, a laboratory DMM, or a simulator. Keeping hardware out of the model layer makes that possible and allows independent testing of each responsibility.

Hardware faults versus RTD model errors

An open circuit, SPI failure, stale ADC sample, or converter fault is an acquisition problem. A resistance outside the model's valid range is an RTD model problem. Applications may report both, but the package does not collapse them into one exception vocabulary.