I am sadly not doing too well in my classes this semester of medical school. It is my last semester of basic science years, and they have really given us a lot of work. I am not going to be able to update DIY Live as much for the next few months. After I finish this semester, I have to study solid for a month for Step 1 of my boards. I am going to hire a writer, (Hopefully my good friend who is also an Electrical Engineer, with a computer concentration.) He should keep good quality DIY projects coming. I will tell him to keep it based on Electronics. I am sorry if I have offended anyone with the console case mods. Anway, I will update as often as I can, and after June, I will be back in full force. So please don’t give up on DIY Live.
-Greg
Anyway, here is a quick little Electronic tool that everyone needs. It is important to know how to use a 555 timer, so here is how to make a square wave with one.
… This project is a piece of test equipment. It’s a square wave oscillator with 6 selectable frequencies from 1Hz to 100kHz, incrementing in decade values.
It’s most useful application is as a Signal Injector for radios and TV’s. A square wave is the most suitable for testing the IF (Intermediate Frequency) strip as the signal will pass through the IF transformers without any attenuation, no matter what the tuned frequency of the circuit.
Normally only a sine wave of the correct frequency will get through but a square wave can be considered to be a composition of all of the multiples of a sine wave and no matter what the frequency of the tuned circuit, it will be processed.
This project can also be used to test digital circuits by providing a clock pulse, using one of the 6 frequencies to determine if a circuit can be “clocked.”
It can also check audio amplifiers for gain and distortion, (providing the correct attenuation is provided on the output of this project)…
2 Responses to “555 Timer”
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I will be sure to have projects of this sort then. Thanks, I hope I do ok on these tests. I am impressed. Biochem was not my favorite subject either. I do much better in EE classes, but I am not in medical school to be a student. I want to be a doctor, and engineering is just a passion and hobby of mine.
Thanks Alan, It is good to hear from you. Honestly, I did not have time, and should not have been posting everyday.
. I am prob. just going to post once a week for a while. My friend is not going to write for me, so I will just have to make it through.
I do look at First Aid, but they changed it to systems based this year, and it kinda stinks.
Actually the problem I am having is that they took all neuro stuff from phys, and path, and combined it with neuro anatomy into a systems based course. I am taking it right now with path, and with pharm. It is killing all of us. My school is so backwards.