Operational Amplifier – CNY70 and LM358 Amplifier Circuit Not Behaving as Expected

low-noise-amplifieroperational-amplifierpcb-designsignal processing

I have reproduced a circuit proposed by Nicholas Burnett in 2013:

An improved noninvasive method for measuring heartbeat of intertidal animals please see Fig. 2

which looks as follows:
enter image description here

The circuit heavily reacts if I move my hand around it (also pretty far away), which can be seen by the indicator LED. It's a sign for me that it kind of works. However, it seems to be very noisy to me.

Is there a way to make this amplifier circuit more stable either by electronic parts, shielding or grounding it somehow?

EDIT1: The circuit was built as a PCB (source: Chinese manufacturer), please see a screenshot from EAGLE below as well as a photo:
enter image description here
enter image description here

Best Answer

First of all, every electronic circuit in this universe has, among others, a property called Electric susceptibility.

Second of all, your circuit has quite a high sensitivity giving that it reacts with your hand quite some distance away. It can also be said that your circuit is a highly sensitive antenna. Keep in mind that your signal is amplified by your amplifier, which looks like it amplifies even the smallest signals. If you build your circuit using a breadboard then it is highly susceptible to small signals.

I can recommend three things to do:

  • use strong connections between components
  • build a PCB
  • reduce amplifier sensitivity

EDIT 1:

So I looked again at your circuit and I can see the POT with a 2MO resistance, having 1 pin left unconnected. You have 2 stages of differential amplifiers. In this case, varistor behavior is unpredictable which can be at maximum resistance thus gain is quite high. So besides strong connections, stable power supply, and so on, I'd also connect pin #3 on the POT to GND. You're actually modifying second-stage gain with that varistor.