Arduino Analog Sample Rate

The Arduino Uno is not the ultimate signal processing machine, but it can do some light duty work on burst data. I had trouble finding the maximum sample rate the Uno can support, which is totally critical for most kinds of work.

With native prescale

• Samples, type casts into floats, and stores in an array at about 8929 Hz, or 112 microseconds per read-and-store
• Samples and into stores into an array of unsigned integers (16 bit) at about 8930 Hz, or 112 microseconds per read-and-store

We can step this up quite dramatically by setting the prescale set to 16:

• Samples, type casts into floats, and stores in an array at about 58600 Hz, or 17 microseconds per read-and-store
• Samples and stores into an array of unsigned integers (16 bit) at about 58606 Hz, or 17 microseconds per read-and-store

Pretty close to a 60 KHz sample rate, more than adequate for audio sampling. Of course, the Arduino doesn’t have enough memory to be a serious audio processor, but it is pretty goood.

The forums discuss this, and arrive at a similar conclusion.

#define NSAMP 5000

void setup(){
  Serial.begin( 57600);
 
  float array_float[ NSAMP]; // float
  unsigned int array_int[ NSAMP]; // 16 bit
  unsigned long int micsbegf, micsendf, micsbegi, micsendi;
 
  for( int i = 0; i < 2; i++){
    if ( i == 1){
       // Set prescale to 16, and retry
      sbi(ADCSRA,ADPS2);
      cbi(ADCSRA,ADPS1);
      cbi(ADCSRA,ADPS0);
    }
    
    // Record floats (extra time for type conversion presumably)
    micsbegf = micros();
    for( int i = 1; i < NSAMP; i++){
      array_float[ i] = (float)analogRead( A1);
    }
    micsendf = micros();  
    
    // Record floats (extra time for type conversion presumably)
    micsbegi = micros();
    for( int i = 1; i < NSAMP; i++){
      array_int[ i] = analogRead( A1);
    }
    micsendi = micros();  
   
    if( i == 1){
     Serial.println("with prescale set to 16");
    } 
    Serial.print("recorded ");
    Serial.print( NSAMP);
    Serial.print(" float samples in ");
    Serial.print(micsendf - micsbegf);
    Serial.println(" usec");
    
    Serial.print("recorded ");
    Serial.print( NSAMP);
    Serial.print(" unsigned integer samples in ");
    Serial.print(micsendi - micsbegi);
    Serial.println(" usec");
  }
}

void loop(){
  delay( 10);
}