This program is intended to instrument the Curve Tracer design published by Mr. Carlson's Lab on Patreon. The original MCL design is available only to Patreon subscribers. This software is released Open Source but does not contain the original MCL project information upon which it is built. If you want to build this project, I suggest you join Mr. Carlson's Lab on Patreon to get the original project that this program augments.
This project adds the following functionality to the MCL Curve Tracer
- Frequency counter for the Sine Wave
- Peak sine wave voltage display
- Step generator with hi/lo voltage display
The step generator uses an R2R ladder and is fed through a series of op amps. A Potentiometer controls final amplitude and an op amp inverts the steps so that negative steps can be used. A switch selects resistors to limit output current to 10, 100, or 1000 uA. See the schematic for more details.
This program uses a 5 volt 16 MHz Arduino with an ATMEGA328P. Use of any other hardware may require alterations to the code. A crystal oscillator rather than a resonator is preferred for frequency counter accuracy.
The frequency counter in this program is limited to low frequencies. It works for frequencies up to ~1000 Hz, but will likely fail at 2000 Hz or before. The tested frequency range is 30 to 1070 Hz.
Requires the NewLiquidCrystal Library from https://github.com/fmalpartida/New-LiquidCrystal
Copyright 2018 by Dennis Cabell KE8FZX
