• Final Day

    daniel.j.songer • 12/20/2018 at 04:06 • 0 comments

    12/19/2018

    Today we added a switch for a clean signal. The waves look great and everything else as well.

    This is our final circuit schematic. The final report will explain any odd parts.

    These are our initial waves:

    and these are the waves that come out:

    It may be important to note that we haven't finished the final write-up but will continue to work on it tonight.

    We also experienced a major problem on partsim. We tried for an hour or so working on correcting the kind of op-amp in the circuit but could not eventually do it. It seemed partsim's capabilities in this area were somewhat lacking, perhaps the free software can't do everything.

    Jonathan and Daniel

  • Day 7

    daniel.j.songer • 12/19/2018 at 04:44 • 0 comments

    12/18/2018 at 10:37 pm

    IT WORKS!!!

    This evening we got our pedal to work. It sounds great. A few minor adjustments were made once we had the guitar plugged in such as how to source the signal in, but shortly after we had Der Shedmeister in full shred! Now all that is left is to write the final report and presentation.

    Daniel and Jonathan

  • Day 6 (Reading Day round 2)

    daniel.j.songer • 12/18/2018 at 00:39 • 0 comments

    12/17/2018

    After a few more hours, we built certain elements up from scratch and finally got a square wave attenuated to the ideal range of 0.5V-1.5V. Now we need to add back in the first element within the circuit of transistor and add diodes as well as audio jacks for true testing.

    Daniel and Jonathan

  • Day 6 (Reading Day)

    daniel.j.songer • 12/17/2018 at 18:43 • 0 comments

    12/17/2018

    During our three hours in lab, we got a full signal coming out of the circuit. Some of the issues we solved today were getting enough voltage to our op-amps to power them, getting a signal out of the end of the circuit, and rewiring our op-amps with proper resistors. We still need to get the signal to the right amplitude and voltage, potentially add a switch, make sure diodes are in the right place, and attach jacks for testing with a true audio signal. Our connections are quite fragile so we might not end up putting it in an actual project box.

    Jonathan and Daniel

  • Day 5 (afternoon)

    jonathan.higgins • 12/15/2018 at 22:09 • 0 comments

    This afternoon, I worked on the project for another two hours, and I was able to get everything connected and the LEDs lit up. I had do a bit of troubleshooting when trying to get the batteries set up correctly, such that I could power the op-amps (with both positive and negative voltages) and the transistor carrier. I believe that what I had would have worked, except that we still need to connect the audio jacks. Additionally, we plan to wire the LEDs differently, so that they will be lit up only when the pedal is turned on, and we still need to add the switch so that a clean signal can pass through the pedal. Tonight, Daniel and I plan to work on sorting out some of these last problems, and hopefully we will get around to testing it. 

    We are making good progress on the pedal (we believe), so hopefully it will be finished soon and then we can transfer it to the case.

    Jonathan

  • Day 4

    jonathan.higgins • 12/14/2018 at 23:57 • 0 comments

    We had to make a lot of adjustments to our design today. After realizing that the op-amps were producing the square waves, we shifted our focus to using them to boost the signal to a point that the op-amps cut the top of the waves off, and then we chose to add another op-amp to keep the output signal from being too great. If it were kept at the output voltage of the first op-amp, the signal would be transferred to an amp at about 10 V (at its max), which would be too great for the guitar amp to handle. We started building our new circuit on separate breadboards so that we can put them in the box as a usable pedal, and we also calculated the best potentiometer and resistor combinations for the op-amps. We have, thus, made great progress in our circuit, but we still need to finish putting it together and testing it.

    In addition to the time spent in class, we worked on the project until 5:45.

    Daniel Songer, Jonathan Higgins

  • Day 3

    daniel.j.songer • 12/13/2018 at 22:06 • 0 comments

    12/13/2018

    To day we saw square wave signals generated by the op-amp but not the circuitry that was supposed to generate the square wave. This was the main problem we experienced today and spent most of the time trying to solve the issue of why our LEDs are not turning on and why there is very little current being driven through the entire circuit. We probed many different parts of the circuit to try and isolate the problem. Then we used actual guitar signals and could not get any output out of the circuit. We will meet tonight with an actual electric guitar and try some different problem solving techniques including attacking some of the problems we currently have in our circuit without audio signals.

    Daniel and Jonathan

  • Day 2

    daniel.j.songer • 12/12/2018 at 21:38 • 1 comment

    12/12/2018

    Today we got a signal out of our circuit using the function generator but still no actual audio signal. We tweaked some things in the circuit to see if it helped the shape and size of the output. Finally, we started talking about how we want to put it all together and what finishing touches we would like to apply. Tomorrow we will test the circuit with a live guitar and speaker to hear the output.

    Jonathan and Daniel

  • Day 1

    daniel.j.songer • 12/12/2018 at 18:20 • 0 comments

    12/10/2018

    We got all the parts from the lab that we needed. We also wired up most of the circuit but could not finish it because we were still waiting on audio jacks to arrive. We didn't test anything either because we ran out of time.

    Daniel and Jonathan