What are the advantages of transducers over nonelectrical measuring instruments?

Answer 1

Using your terminology, there are three types of instruments. Non-electrical instruments. example Pressure gage that is simply a dial mounted to measure pressure in a hose. Electrical instruments can be sub-divided into two types: analog and digital. Analog Electrical instruments are instruments that are operated with an electrical signal. The gage measures the change in resistance or impedance that correlates to a value of the parameter.

Example: Pressure gage in an aicraft cockpit will be wired to a pressure transducer in the back of the aircraft. The electrical signal is processed by a computer that correlates the output to the analog dial. Digital Electrical instruments are instruments that send a digitized values for display. The transducers for this type system will transmit values in digital format or either a On/Off or 0/1 value.

Example: A digital pressure system will convert the pressure into a digital value. The computer can use the digital value to display on a computer monitor either as a numeric value or a graphic display such as a colored band. The advantage of digital instruments is that is allows transmitting more data and information to computers and then be shared with different applications and displays. Whereas an analog system has limitations of accuracy of the data.