Posted: 1/6/2013 5:34:07 PM EDT
| Bought a grab bag of assorted electronic components from a guy yesterday for a few bucks. Among the resistors, caps, trim-pots and a few op amps, I've got a few 8038 IC's. A quick google shows that a function generator can be built easily around one. Thinking about maybe building a couple and selling them sometime. Any ideas for a good enclosure/housing? |
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Bought a grab bag of assorted electronic components from a guy yesterday for a few bucks. Among the resistors, caps, trim-pots and a few op amps, I've got a few 8038 IC's. A quick google shows that a function generator can be built easily around one. Thinking about maybe building a couple and selling them sometime. Any ideas for a good enclosure/housing? That sounds fine as a hobby project, but it's pretty unlikely that you'll be able to build a function generator and sell it and turn a profit, especially if you consider your time. That's a pretty old chip, I think it only goes to a few hundred kHz. You can buy a 2MHz chinese made function generator for about $100 or so. |
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Bought a grab bag of assorted electronic components from a guy yesterday for a few bucks. Among the resistors, caps, trim-pots and a few op amps, I've got a few 8038 IC's. A quick google shows that a function generator can be built easily around one. Thinking about maybe building a couple and selling them sometime. Any ideas for a good enclosure/housing? Any steel box that you can pull apart and drill holes in should be fine. Do you have a circuit board? You will probably be needing some switches. Labels would be nice as well. If you use a 9 V battery or something for the supply, you can put an LED in parallel with everything and use it as an on-off indicator. I built 3 PWM boxes once upon a time. They were a pain to build by hand. It'd be super hard to make any kind of a profit doing this. 
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Bought a grab bag of assorted electronic components from a guy yesterday for a few bucks. Among the resistors, caps, trim-pots and a few op amps, I've got a few 8038 IC's. A quick google shows that a function generator can be built easily around one. Thinking about maybe building a couple and selling them sometime. Any ideas for a good enclosure/housing? That sounds fine as a hobby project, but it's pretty unlikely that you'll be able to build a function generator and sell it and turn a profit, especially if you consider your time. That's a pretty old chip, I think it only goes to a few hundred kHz. You can buy a 2MHz chinese made function generator for about $100 or so. Damn, that sucks. Any ideas on any neat stuff to do with it? |
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Bought a grab bag of assorted electronic components from a guy yesterday for a few bucks. Among the resistors, caps, trim-pots and a few op amps, I've got a few 8038 IC's. A quick google shows that a function generator can be built easily around one. Thinking about maybe building a couple and selling them sometime. Any ideas for a good enclosure/housing? Any steel box that you can pull apart and drill holes in should be fine. Do you have a circuit board? You will probably be needing some switches. Labels would be nice as well. If you use a 9 V battery or something for the supply, you can put an LED in parallel with everything and use it as an on-off indicator. I built 3 PWM boxes once upon a time. They were a pain to build by hand. It'd be super hard to make any kind of a profit doing this. I really don't care much about profit, I just mostly want the fun of building it. As another poster mentioned, I hadn't realized it's such a dated and limited IC, so I will probably just make some kind of spooky noise generator with it or something. I do have perfboard, I do a lot of point to point. One of these days I'd like to delve into PCB development! 
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HOME BREW enclosure is BEST enclosure! http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/2633/qrphomebrew.jpg Cool! Unique one of a kind! 
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Bought a grab bag of assorted electronic components from a guy yesterday for a few bucks. Among the resistors, caps, trim-pots and a few op amps, I've got a few 8038 IC's. A quick google shows that a function generator can be built easily around one. Thinking about maybe building a couple and selling them sometime. Any ideas for a good enclosure/housing? Any steel box that you can pull apart and drill holes in should be fine. Do you have a circuit board? You will probably be needing some switches. Labels would be nice as well. If you use a 9 V battery or something for the supply, you can put an LED in parallel with everything and use it as an on-off indicator. I built 3 PWM boxes once upon a time. They were a pain to build by hand. It'd be super hard to make any kind of a profit doing this. I really don't care much about profit, I just mostly want the fun of building it. As another poster mentioned, I hadn't realized it's such a dated and limited IC, so I will probably just make some kind of spooky noise generator with it or something. I do have perfboard, I do a lot of point to point. One of these days I'd like to delve into PCB development! Don't get me wrong, it's useable as a function generator. Would be fine for someone doing audio work and 300kHz is certainly a usable frequency range. However, if I was in the market for a function generator I'd buy the most bandwidth for the $$$, all else being equal (THD for instance). I wouldn't discourage you from building it as a project to understand how these circuits work, I just wanted you to understand that it is fairly old technology and you probably couldn't build units to sell and break even. |
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Bought a grab bag of assorted electronic components from a guy yesterday for a few bucks. Among the resistors, caps, trim-pots and a few op amps, I've got a few 8038 IC's. A quick google shows that a function generator can be built easily around one. Thinking about maybe building a couple and selling them sometime. Any ideas for a good enclosure/housing? Any steel box that you can pull apart and drill holes in should be fine. Do you have a circuit board? You will probably be needing some switches. Labels would be nice as well. If you use a 9 V battery or something for the supply, you can put an LED in parallel with everything and use it as an on-off indicator. I built 3 PWM boxes once upon a time. They were a pain to build by hand. It'd be super hard to make any kind of a profit doing this. I really don't care much about profit, I just mostly want the fun of building it. As another poster mentioned, I hadn't realized it's such a dated and limited IC, so I will probably just make some kind of spooky noise generator with it or something. I do have perfboard, I do a lot of point to point. One of these days I'd like to delve into PCB development! Don't get me wrong, it's useable as a function generator. Would be fine for someone doing audio work and 300kHz is certainly a usable frequency range. However, if I was in the market for a function generator I'd buy the most bandwidth for the $$$, all else being equal (THD for instance). I wouldn't discourage you from building it as a project to understand how these circuits work, I just wanted you to understand that it is fairly old technology and you probably couldn't build units to sell and break even. You are right, as a customer, I want the most bang for my buck, so bandwidth/$$$ it is! I will do something with them though. Gonna scrub the net for some schematics. Thanks for the help!
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