{"id":6955,"date":"2013-04-05T10:48:39","date_gmt":"2013-04-05T17:48:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/?p=6955"},"modified":"2013-04-08T05:14:56","modified_gmt":"2013-04-08T12:14:56","slug":"2013-04-05-pulse-generator-two-transistor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/?p=6955","title":{"rendered":"2013-04-05 Pulse Generator, Two Transistor, Variable Frequency"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I assembled the circuit to see if I could come up with an alarm.<\/p>\n<h3>Wanna make an Open Garage Door Indicator Alarm<\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/P1030367BW4.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-6961\" alt=\"P1030367BW4\" src=\"http:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/P1030367BW4-300x234.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"234\" srcset=\"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/P1030367BW4-300x234.jpg 300w, https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/P1030367BW4.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The circuit uses two transistors in a circuit that needs only a single timing capacitor and timing resistor to determine the frequency.\u00a0 It&#8217;s somewhat similar to the flasher circuits I&#8217;ve been working on, but it uses 9V supply voltage.\u00a0 It could be as low as 5V, or maybe even lower, but I figure that the alarm will only be on for very short periods of time, a 9V or 6V battery should last for a very long time.<\/p>\n<p>The circuit will be two of the pulse generator circuits, one running at mid audio frequencies, and the other will be running at a pulse every 1\/3 second or so.\u00a0 This will vary the audio pulse generator up and down.\u00a0 Then that output will be used to frequency modulate the RF generator.\u00a0 I know how to do that, but I&#8217;m not yet sure where the 1 second pulses will be fed into the audio generator to vary it up and down.\u00a0 I may connect it through a high value resistor to the base of Q1.\u00a0 The change in frequency doesn&#8217;t have to be a lot, just enough to make it distinctive and easy to recognize.\u00a0 Maybe a few hundred Hertz will be enough.<\/p>\n<p>I built up the circuit in the schematic above, and it worked good.\u00a0 I could vary the frequency from 1300 Hz to 30 kHz.\u00a0 I touched the base of Q1 with my finger while I was connecting the scope probe, and I noticed that the scope showed the frequency was being modulated by the 60 Hz hum from my body.\u00a0 Apparently the circuit is sensitive at that point and I should be able to feed the slow pulse generator into that point through a resistor and get it to vary the audio tone.<\/p>\n<p>I have also been thinking about how to use a lower battery voltage.\u00a0 I could feed the 1.5V battery into one of the flasher circuits, and use it to boost the voltage up to 3 or 4 volts.\u00a0 I could also use a Joule Thief to boost the voltage up to 6 or so volts, and run the whole circuit off that.\u00a0 This method seems very attractive, since I have most of the stuff already laying around.\u00a0 The only question is will the output have enough current to run the RF section and the pulse generators?\u00a0 I&#8217;ll have to check out the current drains.<\/p>\n<p>Of course the single circuit without the warble can be used to do whatever a 555 timer chip can do in the astable mode.\u00a0 The 555 made it so easy to just put the chip into a circuit, that the Real Engineers all forgot how to do it with a simple\u00a0 two transistor circuit like this one.\u00a0 It&#8217;s probably cheaper, and probably isn&#8217;t much different in the number of parts and ease of building.\u00a0 Once you get to know how the different values of R and C interact in the circuit, it should be easy to guesstimate the approximate value of the timing capacitor and resistor.<\/p>\n<p>Warble Circuit<\/p>\n<p>I clipped a 120 ohm earphone element from a telephone handset to the output.\u00a0 I could adjust the frequency from\u00a0 I clipped a 10 uF electrolytic capacitor across the .01 uF, and measured the frequencies.\u00a0 I could vary the pulse rate from 1.25 Hz at the pot maximum, to about 30 to 40 Hz near the pot minimum.\u00a0 I&#8217;m guesstimating that a frequency somewhere around 3 Hz should be a good warble sound.<\/p>\n<h3>Another use(s)<\/h3>\n<p>Another thought that I had was to make a subcarrier.\u00a0 I could set the frequency of the pulses at some high frequency above the audio band, say 38 kHz.\u00a0 Then I could put a microphone with a single transistor preamp on the pulse generator and generate a frequency modulated carrier.\u00a0 I could feed this into a red LED and send the audio modulated carrier on a light beam.\u00a0 I could also use it to\u00a0 modulate the RF carrier, and that would conceal the audio, so it could not be heard until someone used a subcarrier demodulator to recover it.<\/p>\n<p>Another useful tool is the wire tracer.\u00a0 I have one of these, the little box that clips on to the pair of telephone wires and sends the &#8220;deedle-deedle-deedle&#8221; tone down the wire, so it can be traced by the probe.\u00a0 I could put this circuit into a small box with a pair of clip leads and m,ake one just like the commercial models that sell for $30 or more.\u00a0 I really don&#8217;t need to. because I picked up a genuine &#8220;Bell System 139B Test Set&#8221; at a swap meet, and I took it apart and fixed the intermittent contact problem with the battery holder.\u00a0 That&#8217;s one thing that will really make a person angry.\u00a0 I use the tone tracer box at work to find a telephone line among the hundreds or thousands of others.\u00a0 One end may be located a thousand feet away on the other end of campus.\u00a0 If I put the tone tracer box on the phone line and walk all the way down to the other end of campus and can&#8217;t find the line because the box stopped working, and I have to walk all the way back to fix it, then walk all the way down again, it can get really frustrating.<\/p>\n<p>I continue this in <a href=\"http:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/?p=6984\">my following blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I assembled the circuit to see if I could come up with an alarm. Wanna make an Open Garage Door Indicator Alarm The circuit uses two transistors in a circuit that needs only a single timing capacitor and timing resistor to determine the frequency.\u00a0 It&#8217;s somewhat similar to the flasher circuits I&#8217;ve been working on,<a href=\"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/?p=6955\"> <\/p>\n<p> (Read More&#8230;)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-electronic-components","category-meters-and-test-equipment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6955"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6957,"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6955\/revisions\/6957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}