In summary, thermocouples are used in a wide variety of applications with demanding temperature ranges that cannot be measured by other sensing technologies. In addition to the wide temperature range, they are inexpensive, linear over temperature, and are offered in convenient form factors. The challenge to the designer is that because of the small signal output and the requirement of a temperature measurement at the junction of the thermocouple and conversion circuit, complex signal conditioning with precision components is required to get thermocouple data into a language that can be read by a microcontroller. The MAX31855 from Analog Devices was introduced to solve this problem. It features internal cold-junction compensation and data conversion, thus replacing up to 6 components in the discrete design. The device offers support for several thermocouple types, reducing time to market in applications that utilize multiple types. Two interface choices are available, SPI in the MAX31855 and a multi-droppable 1-wire interface with the MAX31850 and 51.