Hi, I would like to use my soundblaster live as a driving signal for a transistor to create an oscillator. I want to use this to drive a high voltage coil. This way I can easily vary my frequency and duty cycle using cool edit.
Will this be possible? What circuitry will I need around this?
Hi, many many moons ago, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, and I was in my school days, in the evening I used an old toobe amplifier, 4W, and connected the output of an (also very old) car ignition coil. Then I fed back some of the output of that amplifier to the input, causing it to *oscillate*, and the car bobbin stepped up the voltage quite a bit so it could even power a CRT.
So, as you in this age, already have a tone generator (in your cool editor) all you have to do is strip a car, get the HV coil, and get an audio amplifier. Try 1 kHz.
Or you can just forget the PC and editor and make a pulse generator with some chips (not potatato, but silicon), but that would require *soldering*, and in some areas of the world that would require you to be *leadfree*.
It is late, and my movie starts in 2 minutes, I have to do other things too, so this is a shorted form guide. BTW I was lying about those dinosaurs.
Look at the 555 timer chip -- it can be set up as an oscilator with variable frequency and duty cycle using a few resistors and capacitors -- there are plenty of schematics on the net that show exactly how to set one up to drive a coil for high voltage !! (much easier to twist the knob on a poteniometer than make a new wave file in CoolEdit)
I don't see why it won't work for you, but you should "buffer" the output of the sound card by using (at least) an op-amp. If high voltage will be involved then you should electrically isolate the computer from the circuit. People will be able to help you better if you tell them more about your plans. Do you have a schematic? How much voltage?
My Daqarta package has a built-in signal generator that can do this for you... no use re-inventing the wheel! And it has *lots* of waveform and modulation options.
Note that while Daqarta is nominally shareware, the signal generator part is really freeware since it continues to work after the trial period. You are welcome to use it forever that way.
Please let me know if you have any problems, either here or via the contact form on the site.
Best regards,
Bob Masta D A Q A R T A Data AcQuisition And Real-Time Analysis
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