Electronic – trouble amplifying signal from a blood pulse sensor using an LDR

amplifierldrsensor

im having a bit of trouble with the following circuit. i am using an LED to shine light onto our finger and reflect onto an LDR (RD). the LDR is the source of the signal. the voltage input is in the 20mV range and the amplification should be 100 times to get it up to 2V. however we are getting no amplification and filtering is also not working. we are currently using a high pass filter followed by a 2 stage low pass filter.

LDR characteristics:
– Dark resistance: 0.5M ohm min.
– Light resistance: 2.8K ohm min 8.4K ohm max

the setup

circuit diagram so far

oscilloscope reading

Power supply setup

Best Answer

The problem is the high pass filter after the first amplifier. With a 1uF capacitor and a 3.2K resistor the cutoff frequency is about 312 Hz. Your frequency input is 0.5 Hz to 30Hz and is being attenuated by the filter. At 30 Hz, the gain of the high pass filter is 0.1, so for 20mv in you get 2 mv out. at 3 hz the gain is 0.01 and at 0.3 Hz the gain is 0.001.

For your circuit, the high pass corner frequency will have to be no more then 0.1 the frequency out from the sensor