Thursday, September 18, 2014
HQ Notch Filter Without Close Tolerance Components

A notch for a narrow frequency band of a few per cent or even less normally requires close-tolerance components. At least, that’s what we thought until we came across a special opamp IC from Maxim. In filters with steep slopes, the component tolerances will interact in the complex frequency response. This effect rules out the use of standard tolerance [...]
Battery Juicer

More and more electronic devices are portable and run off batteries. It is no surprise, then, that so many flat batteries find their way into the bin and often far too early. When a set of batteries can no longer run some device for example, a flashgun the cells are not necessarily completely discharged. If you put an apparently unserviceable AA-size [...]
Router UPS

It can be handy to have your phone and Internet router continue working for a while after a power failure for example, if they provide access to a security system. This requires a backup power supply for the router. The version described here consists of a 12-V lead-acid battery and a voltage converter capable of supplying [...]
Baud Rate Generator

In this article, an RC oscillator is used as a baud rate generator. If you can calibrate the frequency of such a circuit sufficiently accurately (within a few percent) using a frequency meter, it will work very well. However, it may well drift a bit after some time, and then…. Consequently, here we present a small crystal-controlled oscillator. [...]
A Simple Function Generator

Simple triangle-wave generators have a weakness in that the waveform of their output signal normally cannot be modified. The circuit presented here makes it possible to smoothly alter the waveform of a linearly rising and steeply trailing saw-tooth signal through a symmetrical triangle-wave to a slowly trailing, steeply rising linear sawtooth. The [...]
Lead Acid Battery Protector

The circuit described here can be used to ensure that a 12 V sealed lead acid (SLA) gel battery isn’t discharged too deeply. The principal part of the circuit is a bistable relay, which is driven by the output of an op amp. Circuit diagram : Lead Acid Battery Protector Circuit DiagramThe [...]
Short Wave Superregenerative Receiver

Superregenerative receivers are characterised by their high sensitivity. The purpose of this experiment is to deter-mine whether they are also suitable for short-wave radio. Superregenerative receivers are relatively easy to build. You start by building a RF oscillator for the desired frequency. The only difference between a superregenerative [...]
Battery powered Headphone Amplifier

Low distortion Class-B circuitry 6V Battery Supply Some lovers of High Fidelity headphone listening prefer the use of battery powered headphone amplifiers, not only for portable units but also for home "table" applications. This design is intended to fulfil their needs and its topology is derived from the Portable Headphone Amplifier featuring [...]
Comparator Based Crystal Oscillator

Although a simple crystal oscillator may be built from one comparator of an LT1720/LT1721, this will suffer from a number of inherent shortcomings and design problems. Although the LT1720/LT1721 will give the correct logic output when one input is outside the common mode range, additional delays may occur when it is so operated, opening the possibility [...]
Pump Controller For Solar Hot Water System

This circuit optimises the operation of a solar hot water system. When the water in the solar collector is hotter than the storage tank, the pump runs. The circuit comprises two LM335Z temperature sensors, a comparator and Mosfet. Sensor 1 connects to the solar collector panel while Sensor 2 connects to the hot water panel. Each sensor includes [...]
Inductorless 3 to 5 Volts Converter

By configuring a comparator and a transistor to control the oscillator in a charge pump circuit, you enable the pump to generate a regulated output of in principle any desired value. Charge pump ICs can either invert or double an input voltage (for example, 3 V to –3 V or 3 V to 6 V). The charge pump itself does not regulate the output voltage and [...]
Railway Points Sequencer

Dedicated model rail enthusiasts using sophisticated train and points controllers often have the problem that as their layouts get bigger and more complex, the transformer supplying power to the points does not have enough current to switch several points at the same time. The actuators in the points are designed for ac operation so it doesn’t [...]
Very Low Power 32kHz Oscillator

The 32-kHz low-power clock oscillator offers numerous advantages over conventional oscillator circuits based on a CMOS inverter. Such inverter circuits present problems, for example, supply currents fluctuate widely over a 3V to 6V supply range, while current consumption below 250 µA is difficult to attain. Also, operation can be unreliable with [...]
Snail Mail Detector

Since his letter-box is outdoors and quite some way from the house, the author was looking for a simple means of knowing if the postman had been without having to go outside (contrary to popular belief, the weather isn’t always fine in the South of France). Circuits for this kind of ‘remote [...]
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