Adventures in electronics
So for the RAE Intermediate exam I need to build a circuit. Since they don't allow valves (radio tubes) these days (the whippersnappers don't understand them) the easiest thing is a little kit from Maplin. Well, it's easiest if one has actually built something within, say, the last 15 years...
So first to find the tools. Soldering iron, check. Solder, check. Cutting thing, check. Oscilloscope, check. Scope probes -- uhoh. I was going to Maplin anyway...
Having got the stuff I need, it then took me half an hour to work out how to plug in, use and calibrate the scope. It's an Tektronics 2211 digital scope, probably 25 years old or so, but still seems to work fine once I'd worked out the controls. Manual? I don't think I ever had one...
And then I took a break to watch "The Sky at Night"...
And... it worked first time! OK, my soldering is not the neatest, and I also used the multimeter to check for unintended shorts, and I used the scope to see that the 555 was oscilating befor fitting the final transistors, but that's exactly the way I program as well, test in small sections as I go. I even took pictures (rather fuzzy ones):
Original square wave:
Square wave integrated:
'Triangle' wave (a bit rounded!):
Sine wave not bad):
