TH-555 VCO Stripboard Layout!

Fritzing? Or KiCad? KiCad’s been very stable for me.

haha thank you I should take the time to look at all this! the guy is well dressed :joy:

no it’s on fritzing when I start the automatic routing it crashes. I would have to install the new version but to make my pcb I will install KiCad if it’s better…

Take the time to follow the tutorials @BlackDeath has posted above.
Kicad is much more complex that Fritzing, but that’s because it can do way more things…

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OK yes it’s true that the circuit is quite complicated!
I asked for this circuit but it was in gereral. but in spite of that I would really need a VCO 1v/oct because all those I made based on the AS3340 were fried and in the end I had to burn 5 or 6 AS3340 and a good ten TL072. :sweat:

I love this guy. from zero experience I just followed along with his entire series on my own simple circuit (multiples) and I managed to get a working module with only like 15 mistakes :rofl:. You just have to go for it and be ready for a little disappointment when you have to reprint your design twice

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A caveat is that those videos are a couple of years old and appear to be based on KiCad version 4. The current version is 5. These are the tutorials I used, based on version 5. They’re pretty good. But perhaps the DigiKey ones are better (I haven’t gone through them) and you could just skim these for updated information.

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That’s a good point, forgot there were a couple times I had to watch update vids (I learned on kicad5) but the core of the series holds up

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yes thanks for the links I’ll also look for a video in french that would make it easier for me to understand. :sweat_smile:

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I have just made a new stripboard layout of the same dimensions but now the transistors and the Thermistor are close together and there are no more jump wires. It’s not verified yet but I’ve gone over and over it, checking for mistakes and I can’t find any. Here it is:

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I’ve put the new layout up on my website in three parts: wiring diagram, print only view and cuts only view. Again, it’s not verified but I’m confident it’s good. I’m going to build it myself soon to verify it.

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UPDATE: I have just completed the building of a second Thomas Henry VCO-555 using the new layout, so that I could verify it, and I’m happy to say it worked first time. If you put all the trimmers in the middle position before you solder them in, you will find that you don’t even need to adjust the sinewave trimmers :smiley: It’s working perfectly. The one thing I wasn’t happy with was the limited range of the Pulse Width Modulation of the VCO so I changed resistor R47 from 330K to 190K and now PWM goes from 1% to 95%. The layouts are updated with the new value for R47.
All the details are on my website https://www.eddybergman.com

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