Hi All, I’ve been reading about what struck me as a series of really fascinating circuits I can’t help but think are very useful to the knowledgable geek (ie what I strive to be someday:)). Namely these voltage controlled oscillators. No doubt pretty much everyone here has likely encountered the situation where you want to explore something (in my case for fun and to learn a bit). I generally like to start as dirt simple as I can with discrete component type circuits, then move to using a suitable IC that probably does the job much better (though not always, I’ve found).
I’m hoping that one or more of ya’ll might be able to suggest a couple specific varactor’s, maybe your favorite VCO or Frequency to Voltage converter IC’s that are not terribly expensive. Sifting through Jameco’s VCO listings just left me totally stumped as most seem rather expensive ($100 +). Since I’m just interested, initially at least, in simple learning I don’t ahve a lot of requirements. I figure I’ll try implementing a couple circuits built up from discrete components, such as this one I found: http://www.simplecircuitdiagram.com/201 … converter/. I haven’t located a simple Varactor and test circuit I can use to play around with one as yet, so I’m hoping someone might be able to suggest a cheap, likely Varactor. Same for a simple VCO chip.
Hopefully these are not so specialized there isn’t a common one that get’s used a lot by the hobby learning type community.
Much thanks in advance