If all goes according to plan, I’ll put the analogue simulator up here tomorrow. It’s just about got op-amps sorted out now, although it took a little longer than expected to deal with the saturating states with positive feedback. (One of those things that’s obvious once you see it, but I’d never thought of before: in many cases there is an unstable equilibrium point in an op-amp with positive feedback; and the program had to be bright enough to detect that, and kick the solver off to find a stable solution instead.)<\/p>\n
The simulator still doesn’t know about diodes or transistors, that’s the next step. However, since I don’t teach transistors until next November, there’s no hurry for this from my point of view. I am keen to get on with some other demos – the Karnaugh map one for a start, and a breadboard layout tool. (One of the most common mistakes in the lab is students just not building on the breadboard the circuit in the lab scripts, and I think an automated and fun way for them to plan their layouts before they build them would help a lot.)<\/p>\n
There are just a few sample circuits to program as built-in demos, and that’s it for now. Brand new and not much testing done, so any comments particularly welcome: there are very likely to be some bugs.<\/p>\n
Update… damn, a load of **** just landed on my desk that I have to deal with urgently. So it’ll take a bit longer. Oh well… maybe I can get this one finished and on-line before Christmas. I’ll certainly try.<\/p>\n
Update… right, that’s it. Well, it’s not perfect, but it’ll have to do for now. I think it’s good enough for what I need for my first-year course, anyway. I hope someone out there finds it useful as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If all goes according to plan, I’ll put the analogue simulator up here tomorrow. It’s just about got op-amps sorted out now, although it took a little longer than expected to deal with the saturating states with positive feedback. (One … Continue reading