14 December 2009

PC Function Generator (Part 3)

The PC function generator is all done now. Here you can see a picture of it in its enclosure. Looks nice doesn't it? You wouldn't know I build it myself if you see it like this. I'm very happy with it. All in all this kit only cost me 99 euro's and I think that is very cheap for a complete function generator with all the functionality that comes with this thing. I was almost starting to doubt if it could be something serious for this money, but I assure you it is. It is very complementary to my hardware function generator and now I'm able to chose.

I did some more testing on it. In the back you can see my other function generator that has a build in frequency counter. Or maybe it is more a frequency counter with a build in function generator ;) Well I set the output of the PC function generator at a 1Khz square. And here you see that the frequency counter measures 0.999999 Khz I think that is close enough ;) I did some more tests and funny enough it is every time this same result. Just under, but there is no way to calibrate this and I'm not sure even who is right :) Well it doesn't matter. It seems to do the job.

I found a spot for it under my keyboard. Later on I will place the PC oscilloscope next to it. I don't type much on that keyboard anyway so this way it doesn't take up to much space on my desk. I did some more test with the option to design your own waveforms. There is no graphical interface to do this by the way. You have to punch in values in a table, but here you see the result of a waveform I made. You can see it on the screen in the software and also the upper wave on the oscilloscope. Below that is the output of my other function generator. I used this setup to compare frequency output as well. And it seems that here everything looks good to. So I can close up this project as being succesful :)

No comments: