Low-distortion Audio-range Oscillator

Hi David,
I don't see other reasons for distortions increasing, as circuit at FET's gate. PV also has very big and nonlinear output resistance. I don't know, how big effect it makes - needs calculating or measuring. PV output resistance in series with FET's gate capacitance (also nonlinear).
Maybe you can shunt PV with capacitor (about 1000pF) for experiment...

Hi Victor,

Scott is going to investigate this. So I think I will leave it him.
I tried this out of curiosity.

Cheers,
 
This one?
 

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I have the 7220 in series with a 100 ohm resistor.

Input to the series is a 600mVpp square wave.

The QA400 is connected to the vertical output of the scope.
The first shot is the output of the function generator and the second is the voltage across
the 100 ohm resistor in series with the lamp.

I've been trying to measure the tau of the lamp but no luck.

Also with a sine.The waveform is clean on the scope.
The ringing is from the QA400.

I think you need to set up a bridge circuit to measure them. With a little tweaking you could see the time constant from any two resistance points on the lamp pretty easily. The other secondary effect of the lamps would be the reactances at high frequencies. I don't know how inductive a filament would be. A quick check of a 6S6 lamp (12V 6W) I got 100 nH at 100 KHz. However different manufacturers will be very different.
 
I think you need to set up a bridge circuit to measure them. With a little tweaking you could see the time constant from any two resistance points on the lamp pretty easily. The other secondary effect of the lamps would be the reactances at high frequencies. I don't know how inductive a filament would be. A quick check of a 6S6 lamp (12V 6W) I got 100 nH at 100 KHz. However different manufacturers will be very different.

Hi Demian,

I have an ESI impedance bridge 250DE which I haven't used yet.
I would have to dig out the manual for it. Perhaps I can use this.
I can definitely use it to get the inductance of the lamp but I'm not sure how I can use it to get the tau.

Cheers,
 
Hi David -- I would use a current source -- a biggish resistor -- in series with the bulb and look at the DC voltage run-up across the bulb with a scope after connecting the DC source voltage to the resistor. Choose a source voltage and final voltage on the bulb that puts the bulb near where it would be in the circuit. Pretty good way to check, I think.
 
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I was proposing a Whetsone bridge balanced to the target on resistance of the bulb and apply enough power to get the lamp up to temp and read the difference across the bridge nodes. It becomes much easier to see the change.

I used an ESI Videobridge to measure the inductance. I think it will be small and inconsequential.
 
Hi Guys,

What's important here the time the lamp take to change and settle with a fixed frequency
sine changing from one level to another or a DC level with an AC component, there is a thermal inertia to over come. One can see this by observing the lamp intensity when an AC or DC step in amplitude is applied. The intensity is unchanged for a moment and then changes with the lamp's thermal tau.

When trying the multiplier with the 339a oscillator the AGC over steps then reverses and over steps again. It could be that the proportional gain in the the 339a AGC is simply too high for a lamp based multiplier because it's setup for a fast acting jfet.
This was expected.

It's not in my interest to use this for a Bridged T oscillator. I was just studying the effect.

I can find all this through trial and error but it might get me into the ball park faster by taking some measurements and doing some calculation.
 
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I've been giving a lot of thought to the idea of using another lamp's intensity to measure the amplitude of the oscillator. The lamp's intensity is measured by some sort of optical means.
The output of the detector is dc and can be directly applied to control circuitry.

There are a few reasons why this is attractive. Using a lamp as a sensor the behavior is matched by tau and moment of thermal inertia. It has the same response as the lamps in the multiplier. There is no fundamental doubling of the output as there is with a rectified or RMS detected system. The lamps tau offers a low pass function. It is simple.

I will order one or two of the solar cell dip IC's. If there is enough intensity from the lamp to drive them I think it will work. The data sheet shows a linear response to source intensity and they are fast. If that doesn't work then perhaps an LDR or other optical sensor.

I will still build and test my ISH as I have the parts for that and I want to try an MDAC multiplier.

Cheers,
 
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I will order one or two of the solar cell dip IC's. If there is enough intensity from the lamp to drive them I think it will work. The data sheet shows a linear response to source intensity and they are fast. If that doesn't work then perhaps an LDR or other optical sensor.

I will still build and test my ISH as I have the parts for that and I want to try an MDAC multiplier.

Cheers,

You are better off with one big diode to maximize the short circuit current and use a conventional TIA. Everlight has some well under a dollar with a nice broad spectral response.

http://www.everlight.com/datasheets/PD333-3C-H0-L2_datasheet.pdf
 
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You are better off with one big diode to maximize the short circuit current and use a conventional TIA. Everlight has some well under a dollar with a nice broad spectral response.

http://www.everlight.com/datasheets/PD333-3C-H0-L2_datasheet.pdf

Actually I have two ambient light sensors.

I'm not sure if this is quite the same but it might work too.

Connecting an ohm meter to it and shinning a LED flashlight it seems to go from a few mega ohm to a few hundred ohms.
 

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