PRELAB 4

INTERFACE CIRCUITS
AAAAAAAHHHHH.... ZZZZZZ..... FTHFPHTHTF..... AAAAAHHHH!!!! EE122 Student Who Tests Circuits with Wet Fingertips

OBJECTIVES (Why am I doing this prelab?)

To investigate some of the ways we interface electronics to the real world.

WHERES MY PRELAB TEXT???

At this point, you should be working on your projects. Surprise! No Prelab text to read!!! While the materials in the lecture notes are sufficient, it would make sense to flip through Horowitz and Hill to investigate some of the many variants of interface circuits. You will notice that the prelab 4 exercises are much more design oriented than the previous ones. This trend will continue until your prelabs are, in fact, just your project!

By Professor Gregory Kovacs Edited and Updated by Rizwan Ahmed

PRELAB 4 EXCERCISES
Work With Your Team EXERCISE 1:
Design a low-cost seismic sensor. Start with a block diagram and then move on to a schematic. Simulate the circuit as well as you can (substituting a signal generator for the geophone1). The following is a suggested description, but the details are left to you: The first stage should be an amplifier with a variable gain. Since you are not certain of the output voltage level of the geophone, be prepared to adjust the gain. The second stage should be a 2nd order low-pass filter (suggested cut-off 30-40 Hz) designed using the Filter Pro program from Texas Instruments. This program may be downloaded from the course website under the handouts section. You may wish to use a Chebychev or a Butterworth type. You may also wish to explain what type you chose, and why. The final stage should be a comparator or Schmitt trigger (your choice) that drives an LED to indicate that the seismic signal has exceeded a threshold that you choose. Simulate as much of the circuit as you can, providing the filters transfer function (gain and phase) and step response, and verifying end-to-end operation all the way through to the comparator output (if you have no idea about the geophone signals, simply choose, and be ready to change your design in the lab if necessary). For the purpose of verifying end-to-end operation, you can use a sine wave for the voltage input in place of the actual geophone signal (which is obviously not found in SPICE!). Turn in a complete schematic showing all component values and types (be sure you can actually build this circuit using parts available in lab). Be sure to consult data sheets to make sure the LED current is within specifications for the op-amp you choose. To get LED current within specifications, put a resistor in series with the LED. The value of the resistor should be such that it drops the required voltage as the desired current. For example, if the output is 5V and the LED takes 2V at 10 mA, then R = (5-2)/10*10-3 = 300 Ohms.
The geophones are basically seismic sensors that output a voltage signal in response to low-frequency vibrations. The lab gives a range of 5-15 Hz, but you should design your filters to be in the range of 30 to 40 Hz cutoff. In addition, the signal levels for the geophones can range from 10s of mV to 1 or 2 V, depending on how hard you shake them. So please design your amplifiers accordingly (you'll need to think about how the signal level should correspond with your Schmitt Trigger, if you decide to use that instead of the comparator). You'll be able to design your amplifier with a potentiometer (variable resistor - we have 10k and 100k pots in lab), so that you can adjust your output signal to the correct range. By Professor Gregory Kovacs Edited and Updated by Rizwan Ahmed
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LAB 4
INTERFACE CIRCUITS
THE PATH TO MEASURING OPEN-LOOP GAIN IS AS NARROW AS WALKING THE RAZORS EDGE A Stanford Dali

NOTE: You will not be told exactly what to put in your write up. The idea is that you present your data and what you learned from it. Typically, you will make plots and analyses a part of the write-up. Write-ups must not be longer than ten pages. If you have questions, please ask. We are here to help!!

INTRODUCTION
In this lab session, you will have to build and test many of the circuits you designed in the prelab using a breadboard. BE CAREFUL TO OBSERVE THE CONNECTIONS OF EACH COMPONENT!!! YOU CAN WASTE A LOT OF TIME IF YOU RUSH AND DONT CHECK! ALWAYS use 0.1 F decoupling capacitors on each power supply rail, right next to each op-amp. Use one capacitor from the positive rail to ground and one from the negative rail to ground. Use 12 V supplies. You may wish to put an input 50 or 51 resistor from the signal generators output to ground if you are using it to test your circuits. This is done so that the amplitudes on the signal generator are correct (they assume a 50 load).

BUILD THE LOW-COST SEISMOGRAPH CIRCUIT

Build the seismograph circuit that you designed in the prelab. This is your first effort to implement a complete system that you have designed. As such, it is up to you to decide how to test the circuits functionality. Below are a set of steps that you should take as suggestions for how to proceed. They are certainly not comprehensive, but should get you started. Remember...have fun!

By Professor Gregory Kovacs Edited and Updated by Rizwan Ahmed

Measure its total noise (give as an RMS value) while the input to the circuit is grounded (no geophone). You can measure the RMS value of a signal on the oscilloscope (Under the Measure -> Voltage -> Vrms menu item). Verify the filters transfer function, step response, and the entire circuits end-to-end performance as you did with virtual instruments in the prelab. Adjust the front-end gain as necessary. Attach the geophone and test the circuit. Look at the time-domain signal (oscilloscope) and the frequency-domain content (dynamic signal analyzer). Describe your experiments - what can you detect?

By Professor Gregory Kovacs Edited and Updated by Rizwan Ahmed