Electronic – How to decouple two 555s from each other

555decoupling-capacitor

I have two 555s in astable mode producing two audio tones that are sent to a speaker. The idea is to mix the tones. The power source is a single 9V battery. The problem is that the two 555s interfere with each other.

I added some decoupling capacitors across the VCC and GND pins of each 555 but it looks like I will need 1000uf to separate their signals perfectly. Small capacitors in parallel seem to have no effect.

  1. Is 1000uf excessive? It feels excessive.
  2. Are there any other common methods for decoupling?
  3. Could I avoid the problem entirely if I used an LM358 op amp as an oscillator instead?

EDIT: More information

  • I have not tried the CMOS 555s but that is probably the easiest solution.

  • I am using a summing amplifier (op amp) which sums the signals but does not stop the 555s from interfering with each other.

Best Answer

Do this

schematic

simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab