EE 230 Lab

Formal Report

Report: Temperature Indicator Circuit (Design Project 2)

Matthew Clucas and Jacob Moyer
Section: A
Submission Date: 4/25/2014

EE 230 Lab

Formal Report

Circuit Photo
Labeled Circuit:

1: Ground pins
2: Vref input
3: Op Amp Positive Voltage Supply
4: Op Amp Negative Voltage Supply (wired to ground)
5: Vref voltage divider (adjusts voltage to what is needed for LEDs)
6: Green LED comparator
7: Orange LED comparator
8: Red LED comparator

EE 230 Lab

Formal Report

Active Circuit:

EE 230 Lab

Formal Report

Circuit Description
Our stereo amplifier circuit has three main parts: a unity gain buffer, an active high pass
filter, and an active low pass filter.
The unity gain buffer deals with volume control and is meant to provide a voltage to the
filters without disrupting the gain or corner frequency due to changing resistance from
the potentiometer. This part of the circuit begins with a connection to our input voltage
and connects to a 100k potentiometer which is used for volume control. The
potentiometer is connected to the ground and the unity gain buffer circuit. As we adjust
the potentiometer, the voltage going to the unity gain buffer changes and thus changes
our overall output. This allows us to adjust the volume of our stereo amplifier. The unity
gain buffer is there to buffer the voltage we get from the potentiometer without affecting
the resistance of the high pass filter which would change both the gain and the high
pass corner frequency of our circuit.
The high pass filter has 4 resistors r1-r4. The combination of R1 and R2 gave us a
value of 1592.5. The combination of R3 and R4 gave us a value of 25.597 k ohm. We
also had a capacitor in the high pass filter which has a value of 1 microFarad. To filter
any frequency that is not above 100Hz, we made the corner frequency equal to 100 with
the formula:

We also intended for the entire gain for the circuit, which is 20, to be in the high pass
but adjusted the value slightly as this made it easier as a whole for the circuit to be built.
This is because the gain in the low pass later on in the circuit, does not equal 1 exactly.
The gain for this part of the circuit equals:

EE 230 Lab

Formal Report

This came out to be 18.59.

The low pass filter has 3 resistors r5-r7. R5 has a value of .99k ohms. The combination
of r6 and r7 has a value of 1.041k ohms. There is also a capacitor in parallel with the
combination of r6 and r7, which has a value of 10 nanoFarads. To filter any frequency
that is above 15kHz, we made the corner frequency equal to 15Khz with the formula:

Finally our gain for the low pass filter equals:

Which came out to be 1.052. Therefore the total gain of the circuit is equal to the gain of
the low pass * the gain of the high pass: 18.59 * 1.052 = 19.93.
Frequency Response
At maximum volume with an input voltage of .3Vpp, this was the graph of our measured
frequency response, with the corresponding data shown below.

EE 230 Lab

Formal Report

Frequency Output voltage

Frequency
Output voltage Frequency
Output voltage
10
0.437422
413.20124
4.101198
17073.52648
2.729071
10.974988
0.479511
453.487851
4.119326
18738.17423
2.58077
12.045035
0.52943
497.702356
4.134641
20565.12308
2.429574

EE 230 Lab
13.219411
14.508288
15.922828
17.475284
19.179103
21.049041
23.101297
25.353645
27.825594
30.538555
33.516027
36.783798
40.370173
44.306215
48.626016
53.366992
58.570208
64.280731
70.548023
77.426368
84.975344
93.260335
102.3531
112.3324
123.28467
135.30478
148.49683
162.97508
178.86495
196.30407
215.44347
236.44894
259.50242
284.80359
312.57159
343.04693
376.49358

Formal Report
0.579418
0.6347
0.694613
0.759777
0.830573
0.907454
0.990718
1.080499
1.177283
1.281211
1.392199
1.510039
1.635189
1.766398
1.903587
2.045596
2.191614
2.340165
2.489592
2.638335
2.784853
2.926954
3.063484
3.192974
3.313818
3.426064
3.528216
3.620517
3.703306
3.776477
3.840859
3.897222
3.945849
3.987658
4.023105
4.053571
4.079398

546.227722
599.48425
657.933225
722.080902
792.482898
869.749003
954.548457
1047.615753
1149.756995
1261.856883
1384.886371
1519.911083
1668.100537
1830.73828
2009.233003
2205.13074
2420.128265
2656.087783
2915.053063
3199.267138
3511.191734
3853.528594
4229.242874
4641.588834
5094.138015
5590.810183
6135.907273
6734.150658
7390.722034
8111.308308
8902.150854
9770.099573
10722.67222
11768.11952
12915.49665
14174.74163
15556.76144

4.147197
4.157387
4.165762
4.172439
4.177602
4.181595
4.184189
4.186085
4.186429
4.185609
4.184244
4.181858
4.177718
4.172869
4.166517
4.15871
4.149335
4.137237
4.122958
4.105947
4.085836
4.062052
4.034268
4.001315
3.963169
3.91868
3.867213
3.808316
3.741278
3.66529
3.579747
3.484744
3.380109
3.265805
3.142677
3.011259
2.873223

22570.1972
24770.76356
27185.88243
29836.4724
32745.49163
35938.13664
39442.06059
43287.61281
47508.10162
52140.08288
57223.67659
62802.91442
68926.12104
75646.33276
83021.75681
91116.27561
100000

2.276868
2.124153
1.972836
1.824162
1.679144
1.538341
1.402288
1.271496
1.146129
1.026331
0.912267
0.804322
0.703161
0.609383
0.523976
0.447391
0.379898

Now we need to check if our corner frequency and gain meets the requirements.
To calculate the corner frequency we multiply the maximum output by (2^(.5))/2
or just .7071. The maximum output on the graph occurs at 1149 Hz and is 4.186429
Volts rms, so the corner frequencies will be when the output voltage is .7071 *
7

EE 230 Lab

Formal Report

4.186Vrms = 2.960Vrms. On the low end of the graph, the two frequencies that have
outputs closest to 2.96Vrms are 93.3 Hz and 102.4 Hz. We were required to achieve an
actual corner frequency of 100 Hz (~ 5%) for the high pass frequency meaning that the
actual corner frequency would have to be between 95 and 105 Hz. Our frequencies are
quite close to 100Hz and do meet the required 5% goal. On the high end of the graph,
the two frequencies that have outputs closest to 2.96Vrms are 14,174 Hz and 15,556
Hz. We were required to achieve an actual corner frequency of 15 kHz (~ 5%) for the
low pass frequency meaning that the actual corner frequency would have to be between
14,250 and 15,750 Hz. Assuming that our actual corner frequency is close the middle
point between our two closest frequencies, which is 14,865 Hz, then our corner
frequency is well within 5% and meets the requirements.
To calculate our gain we need to divide our output by the input. We already know
our maximum output to be 4.186Vrms and we measured our input, after the
potentiometer so it is what the actual circuit input is instead of the full input that is
modified by our potentiometer for volume control, to be .2146Vrms. So our gain turns
out to be 4.186/.2146 = 19.506. Our required gain was to be 20 +-1 meaning that our
gain had to be between 19 and 21, which 19.506 is, so our gain met the requirements.
Now we need to verify that this still works for a lower volume setting, otherwise it would
not really be a volume controlled stereo amplifier. On the next page is a graph of the
frequency response with the potentiometer that we use to control the volume at close to
half resistance.

EE 230 Lab

Formal Report

EE 230 Lab

Formal Report

This graph closely matches the shape of the previous graph except that the maximum
output is just under 2 or about half of what our output at max volume, which is what we
expected and wanted. This shows that our volume control works and would lower the
volume without distorting the sound.
Comments
We faced a few issues when we were building our circuit. The first and most
problematic issue we faced was that the initial equation we used for the active high pass
filters corner frequency was wrong. The equation we used, which we obtained from the
online notes:

When the actual formula for the corner frequency is:

This caused us to have troubles with the active high pass filter, but because the two
filters corner frequencies are independent of each other, the active low pass filters
corner frequency remained constant. After many different trial and error attempts to
correct our corner frequency, we discovered that the corner frequency equation was
wrong and that it actually depended on R1. We then corrected the problem and had
both corner frequencies within 5% of their desired values.
Another issue we faced was measuring the correct gain for our circuit. At first, we
would follow the equations and get a value that seemed very far off from what it should
be and eventually we discovered that we had been using different units for our gain
calculations. We had been measuring the input as Vpp and our output with Vrms. Once
we realized this we quickly changed how we measured the input and our gain was
correct.
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EE 230 Lab

Formal Report

Conclusion
In lab we decided to build a stereo amplifier circuit. To do so, we connected a unity gain
buffer, an active high-pass filter, and an active low-pass filter. This method gave us an
actual gain of 19.506 and corner frequencies within 5% of 100 Hz and 15 kHz. The
overall design used two circuits, and one LMC660 chip for each circuit.
We also gained some experience with debugging circuits. We found one of the
equations we were using for the corner frequency was incorrect, and that the function
generator outputs Vpp while the multi-meter defaults to reading Vrms.
After fixing our bugs we saw that the circuit worked as intended. We also found that the
circuit itself was fairly straight forward and not too difficult to design, and that the biggest
problems we faced were simply debugging issues.

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