I’m testing a small solar cell with a resistive load. I obtained the screen shot by blocking (lower voltage) and unblocking (higher voltage) most of the light from hitting the solar panel.
Notice that I can consistently get what appears to be dropped ammeter readings during (what I suspect are) autoranging changes to the internal shunt resistor.
From my test and measurement days, I recall that these sort of instruments have to perform a break-before-make connections to the DUT to avoid damage to the instrument. If the ADC readings were not momentarily suppressed during the break-before-make period, then indeed you would see invalid ADC readings.
The dropped readings aren’t really very problematic, because they are statistically infrequent, therefore not materially affecting the average, standard deviation, etc.
Where they are a problem, is with the min/max reading, thus completely rescaling the current amplitude with each dropped reading, and losing all intuition for the interaction between small-valued I, V, as I change the light, and the load resistor.
Is there a way to filter/average the current min/max readings? Or to disable ADC readings surrounding autorange changes?
I suspect omitted ADC readings would be better than misleading ADC readings.
BR,
Kevin