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Day 4

A project log for Jodie and John's Epic Project

A rain water detector

jodie-mclennanJodie McLennan 12/14/2018 at 21:381 Comment

We spent more time today examining our circuit, looking for the potential source of why our signal (measured via the Tektronix oscilloscope) was not what we anticipated nor what Multisim argued. We tried three different buzzers/speakers, applying a voltage of 3.55 V each time. We found that the larger the speaker we used, the larger the range of viable potentials that could be applied across the circuit. As we were doing this, we realized that the buzzers/speakers fell silent for higher potentials. This gives us the current indication that at 12 V, the resultant angular frequency through the buzzer (recommended by the design we are using) is too high for the buzzer to produce any sound, as it has a maximum frequency rating of 200 Hz. We will continue to examine the circuit to see if there is something fundamentally wrong with it. A discrepancy that we discovered prior to today but haven't addressed yet is the differing values of the potential drop across the resistor between the output pin of the op-amp and the input pin of the 555 timer. We will examine that in more detail soon.

Discussions

Ellie T wrote 12/15/2018 at 19:30 point

It'll be good to note what speakers were tried (on the back it should write 5-8 Ohms or something), as speakers behave like inductors if I recall correctly, and so frequency would be an important factor.

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