Need help amplifying Pulse Train to drive Pen Laser tia sal2

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Greetings All
Need help amplifying Pulse Train to drive Pen Laser

I would like to create a pulse train using my sound card and cooledit pro
(creating square waves) but I don't think I have enough power to drive my
ULN2003A Darlington Transistor Array
(http://www.chipcatalog.com/TI/ULN2003A.htm) can anybody recommend a way
to boost the voltage/current/power so I can drive my ULN2003A chip, I'm
trying to make it very portable, is their a small chip that will allow me
amplify my audio signal/pulse train?

For those of you who are interested this is what I intend to do.
1) Create various pulse trains by creating square waves in cool edit
pro
2) Saving audio file as wav or mp3 onto my iRiver iFP 799T mp3 player
3) Using mp3 player with square wave audio pulse trains to drive my
ULN2003A
4) Have ULN2003a and 3V battery power/pulse a small pen laser less
than 5mW

I do have a bunch of 555/556 timers that could be made into voltage
doublers http://www.reconnsworld.com/power_voltdoubler.html but my mp3
player doesn't put out the required power to operate them.

If anyone has any other recommendations or another way I should go about
it I'm all ears.

TIA

 

[Robert Baer]

Greetings All
Need help amplifying Pulse Train to drive Pen Laser

I would like to create a pulse train using my sound card and cooledit pro
(creating square waves) but I don't think I have enough power to drive my
ULN2003A Darlington Transistor Array
(http://www.chipcatalog.com/TI/ULN2003A.htm) can anybody recommend a way
to boost the voltage/current/power so I can drive my ULN2003A chip, I'm
trying to make it very portable, is their a small chip that will allow me
amplify my audio signal/pulse train?

For those of you who are interested this is what I intend to do.
1) Create various pulse trains by creating square waves in cool edit
pro
2) Saving audio file as wav or mp3 onto my iRiver iFP 799T mp3 player
3) Using mp3 player with square wave audio pulse trains to drive my
ULN2003A
4) Have ULN2003a and 3V battery power/pulse a small pen laser less
than 5mW

I do have a bunch of 555/556 timers that could be made into voltage
doublers http://www.reconnsworld.com/power_voltdoubler.html but my mp3
player doesn't put out the required power to operate them.

If anyone has any other recommendations or another way I should go about
it I'm all ears.

TIA

The output voltage is moer than enough; use a current limiting
resistor from the output to the base of the darlington; 1K with 1V
nominal output gives 1mA drive and that translates to way over an amp
"saturated" (darlingtons *cannot* be saturated).

 

[Bob Masta]

Greetings All
Need help amplifying Pulse Train to drive Pen Laser

I would like to create a pulse train using my sound card and cooledit pro
(creating square waves) but I don't think I have enough power to drive my
ULN2003A Darlington Transistor Array
(http://www.chipcatalog.com/TI/ULN2003A.htm) can anybody recommend a way
to boost the voltage/current/power so I can drive my ULN2003A chip, I'm
trying to make it very portable, is their a small chip that will allow me
amplify my audio signal/pulse train?

For those of you who are interested this is what I intend to do.
1) Create various pulse trains by creating square waves in cool edit
pro
2) Saving audio file as wav or mp3 onto my iRiver iFP 799T mp3 player
3) Using mp3 player with square wave audio pulse trains to drive my
ULN2003A
4) Have ULN2003a and 3V battery power/pulse a small pen laser less
than 5mW

I do have a bunch of 555/556 timers that could be made into voltage
doublers http://www.reconnsworld.com/power_voltdoubler.html but my mp3
player doesn't put out the required power to operate them.

If anyone has any other recommendations or another way I should go about
it I'm all ears.

TIA

Perhaps you have already considered this in your plans, but all
consumer audio devices that I have ever seen or heard of are
AC coupled. So you will either need to keep the square wave
frequencies high enough (at least in the low Hertz range) or
you will need some sort of recovery circuit to convert switching
spikes to flip-flop transitions. But sounds do-able, at least as
WAV files.... I'd be really amazed if MP3s kept the waveform
intact, though might be OK with the spike-to-flip-flop circuit.

You might want to take a look at my DaqGen freeware
sound card signal generator for your initial experiments.
It generates everything in real-time, not to a file, but has
extensive options for creating all sorts of waveforms,
including pulses of various duty cycles, PWM, etc. (There
is an extensive Help system, but let me know if you need any
additional help with this.) This might help you optimize
waveforms since you can tweak things while everything
is running on the test bench.

[SHAMELESS PLUG]
DaqGen is the signal generator portion of the upcoming
Daqarta system (couple more months), which *will* allow
you to save waveforms to files. That's just a side benefit;
it's main purpose is to create test signals and analyze the
responses to those signals from a device or system under
test. Lots of scope, signal averager, spectrum analyzer,
and spectrogram options.

Best regards,


Bob Masta
dqatechATdaqartaDOTcom

D A Q A R T A
Data AcQuisition And Real-Time Analysis
www.daqarta.com
Home of DaqGen, the FREEWARE signal generator

 

[Daniel]

The output voltage is moer than enough; use a current limiting
resistor from the output to the base of the darlington; 1K with 1V
nominal output gives 1mA drive and that translates to way over an amp
"saturated" (darlingtons *cannot* be saturated).

Big Call!!! "darlingtons *cannot* be saturated" Stick 1mA in the base
of first, small signal Amp Transistor could easily become 50-100mA into
base of second Transistor of the Darlington Pair could be 2.5-10 Amps,
which could easily saturate some Darlington Pair Amplifiers.

Daniel