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Project Notes

#038 ElectretADC

Use an Arduino to read the amplified signal from an electret microphone.

Notes

The electret microphone is biased to about 1V, and the AC component of the signal tapped via C1.

The microphone signal is then fed to the LM324 set for a non-inverting DC gain of 23 to convert it to a full range analog input.

G = 1 + Ra1/Ra2 = 1 + 22/1 = 23

Although the LM324 is not particularly specialised for audio applications, it works OK for a quick test. I’ll probably redo this when I have an LM386 Low Voltage Audio Power Amplifier available.

The amplified signal is read by the Arduino and plotted with LEAP#090 PlotNValues (a simple Processing sketch).

Here is a sample. The lower trace is the mic signal presented to the non-inverting input, the upper trace is the amplified signal output from the OpAmp:

processing trace

Construction

The Breadboard

The Schematic

The Build

NB: for simplicity, the circuit is powered from the Arduino 5V pin. That works fine, although it is equally possible to use a separate power supply (but ensuring there is a common ground connection).

Credits and References

About LEAP#38 AudioArduino

This page is a web-friendly rendering of my project notes shared in the LEAP GitHub repository.

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About LEAP

LEAP is my personal collection of electronics projects - usually involving an Arduino or other microprocessor in one way or another. Some are full-blown projects, while many are trivial breadboard experiments, intended to learn and explore something interesting.

Projects are often inspired by things found wild on the net, or ideas from the many great electronics podcasts and YouTube channels. Feel free to borrow liberally, and if you spot any issues do let me know or send a pull-request.

NOTE: For a while I included various scale modelling projects here too, but I've now split them off into a new repository: check out LittleModelArt if you are looking for these projects.

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