analogdigital-logiclight
I am trying to make a circuit that takes an audio signal from an MP3 player and converts the signal into digital signals based on frequency.
Audio In is the is the signal from the audio jack of an android phone.
D9, D10, and D12 are all inputs of the ADAfruit Flora.
I suppose what I am asking for is critique of this design.
The TRRS connectors are wired like this, in order:
That way the headphones will work plugged into a normal TRS jack, too.
The microphone input is meant to connect to an electret mic with a circuit like this:
The bias voltage, resistor, and DC-blocking capacitor are all inside the phone. So just connecting a signal source like a computer's sound card to the microphone input (with ground to the ground ring) should work.
If your sound source's DC output resistance is too low (normally a good thing), the phone could be interpreting it as a continuous button press (Answer or Play/Pause), because the headset button shorts the mic line's bias resistor to ground. Does it do anything to indicate that it thinks a button is being pressed? If this is the case, just put an electrolytic capacitor in series with your source, like 10 µF to 100 µF between your source and the microphone input. This will block the DC current from the bias resistor while allowing the AC signal to pass. Larger capacitance will have better low-frequency response.
For instance, if the input impedance of the phone is 2.2 kΩ, 10 µF will have a -3 dB cutoff frequency of 7 Hz, which is plenty.
I assume "as an analog signal" means on an oscilloscope as opposed to a logic analyser.
For a digital signal, it is important to be able to check the signal integrity and see whether it is subject to problems such as ringing, crosstalk, reflections, jitter, attenuation, etc.
This can only be done with a scope with a bandwidth > the frequencies present in the signal - remember with a digital signal there are frequencies much higher than the fundamental present, how high is dictated by the rise time of the signal. For a 1MHz digital signal you would generally want at least a 5MHz bandwidth, preferably much higher.
For debugging a typical small microcontroller (e.g. PIC, Atmel AVR, Arduino, etc) a scope bandwidth of at least 50MHz is preferable. This should be capable of handling just about all situations you might encounter.
There are many signals above 1MHz that need checking, most microcontroller clock signals are > 1MHz, SPI is often > 1MHz, USB, etc. FPGA designs may run at 100s of MHz, high speed ADCs and DACs, etc.
On a logic analyser all you can see is whether it is above a certain level or below a certain level (like a 1-bit scope) so while useful in other ways they are not suitable for checking signal integrity.
The image below (taken on an MSO - Mixed Signal Oscillscope, a combination of a scope and logic analyser) is a good example of crosstalk causing problems and why a scope is needed to see what's really happening. Notice the waveforms are quite a way from the idea of a "perfect" digital signal:
For the leftmost red arrow the second trace down is the transmitting trace, and the top trace down is the "victim" (receiving trace) and the right hand pulse they are reversed. We can see on the rise of the "transmitting" signal it causes a spike in the receiving trace, resulting in a unwanted glitch on the logic display, which is what the digital receiver would "see".
In this image at the top we can see signal degradation caused by an incorrectly terminated trace, causing reflections. At the bottom we can see the same signal after it has been correctly terminated:
On the logic analyser, both signals may work, but there is no way of knowing how marginal the first signal is without checking with a scope. The incorrectly terminated trace may only cause problems intermittently, so it's important to be able to check it's integrity.
Looking at your link to the DPScope design, I see it's dsPIC based. It won't be comparable to anything you can buy (you can get a 20MHz analogue scope for << £50 nowadays, and a 5-10MHz DSO for similar)
However, it would be a great project for educational purposes, and you will get something perfectly useable for low frequency (e.g. audio, UART, PWM) purposes. Plus you'll have fun building it. If your thinking of doing so, I'd say go for it, just don't expect it to take care of all your debugging needs. If your budget is limited, get a cheap analogue scope - you will generally get the highest bandwidth for your money.
Remember the chicken and egg problem - you need a scope in order to build and test a scope ;-)
Best Answer
Pretty standard Color Organ circuit. A buffer stage, going into three RC band-pass filters, to transistor based led sections. While op-amps might be better than transistors, it should still work.