Have both the MCP3008 ADC and the MCP4131 working individually with my Raspberry Pi but they fail to work

I’m using an MCP3008 ADC and an MCP4131-103 (10k) digital potentiometer to try and create a sort of “adjustable voltage divider.”

For the project, the resistance I’m measuring will vary, and I hoped to use the MCP4131(http://www.kynix.com/Detail/61598/MCP4131-103E%2FMF.html) to adjust my reference resistor on the fly. Namely:

Vin
|
R1
|
|--Vout
R2
|
GND

I’m measuring and logging R1 (a material) over time, and it increases from maybe 500-20k Ohms over the duration of interest. If I use a fixed resistor for R2, I get poor resolution when the value is mismatched with the current value of R1. I hoped to have the digital pot adjust itself based on the running average so I also maintain my resolution.

I believe I have both the MCP3008 ADC and the MCP4131 working individually with my Raspberry Pi 3 using SPI, but they don’t seem to work like I expect in a voltage divider setup.

Wiring up the MCP3008 like this Adafruit guide, I used a voltage divider with a 10k resistor as R2 and the following formula to find R1:

v_out = adc * 3.3/1024
R1 = R2*(3.3 - v_out)/v_out

| resistor used |  calculated |
|---------------+-------------|
|          1000 |        1010 |
|          4700 |        4628 |
|         47000 |       46574 |

That confirmed that my ADC appears to be functioning well.

In addition, I cycled through settings for the MCP4131 and manually read the value between the high (3.3V) and wiper with an multimeter. In each case I’m sending a value of target resistance * 128/10000. I plotted the results and get:

That looked good enough for me to believe the pot is also connected and functioning correctly.

Now, when I try to setup a voltage divider like the above to test both the digital pot and the ADC together, I get wonky results. I’ve tried two configurations to troubleshoot, substituting the 4131 as either R1 or R2, with a fixed resistor as the other one used:

wiper pin of 4131 --|-- resistor -- GND
                    |
                    |
                   ADC

3.3V -- resistor --|-- wiper pin of 4131
                   |
                   |
                  ADC

Using a 10k resistor in the first configuration and setting the digital pot to 5k, I get a raw ADC reading of 403, or 1.3V. I’d have expected:

3.3V * (10000 / (10000+5000)) = 2.2V

This results in a calculation of:

10000*(3.3 - v_out)/v_out = 15384 # should be 5000

Swapping things around and using the second configuration, I get an ADC reading of 624 or 2.01V. I’d expect a value of:

3.3V * (5000 / (10000+5000)) = 1.1V

This results in a calculation of:

5000*(3.3 - v_out)/v_out = 3209 # should be 10000

I’m wondering if because the potentiometer is really a voltage divider in and of itself, it’s not behaving like I expect. Should I be, for example, changing my ADC Aref or GND to one of the R_a or R_b pins on the potentiometer? Or perhaps the error is in my code and I need to account for two voltage dividers in a row?

I haven’t found any examples of using a potentiometer as one of the resistors in a voltage divider. Unfortunately, a potentiometer is one, searching “using a potentiometer in a voltage divider” gets a ton of hits that simply explain what pots are.

Thanks for any guidance, and I’m happy to post whatever other information would be helpful.

Hello…i want to know does both Dout connect to the same MISO pin, both DIN to the same MOSI pin and one CS to the CE0 the other to CE1?
What is the python code to select between which of the two chips you are reading?

complete pcb