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Project Notes

#470 Simple Crystal AM Transmitter

Building a classic crystal-locked AM transmitter with a 1MHz MCO-1510A CMOS crystal oscillator.

Build

Here’s a quick demo..

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Notes

This is perhaps the classic AM transmitter - a self-oscillating crystal with amplitude modulated by transformer coupling between signal (audio) source and voltage driving the oscillator.

Since it is “rock-locked”, this transmitter has no frequency agility! It only operates on the frequency of the crsytal (1MHz in this case).

One of the best demonstrations is covered in “How to Make AM Radio Transmitter” by RimstarOrg:

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Circuit Design

The final circuit includes an output filter network (C1, C2, C3 and L1) as shown in the schematic.

The transformer winding ratio is not particularly important, though it does directly affect the depth of modulation. Most designs specify a 1000Ω:8Ω audio transformer, but in the final build I used a 600Ω:600Ω audio transformer without problem.

Breadboard

Schematic

Initial Breadboard Build

The most basic build just required the CMOS oscillator and transformer. For a first test, I just grabbed a 220V : 24V power transformer. Note: 220V winding on the power control side, 24V winding on the audio input side (the reverse will “work” but the modulation depth will be very, very small).

SimpleCrystalTransmitter_bb_build

With audio input, the following scope trace gives an indication of the depth of modulation, but also makes it very clear that we’re still broadcasting a horrible square wave carrier.

While it is easy to pickup with an AM receiver, the sound quality is understandably quite poor.

scope_unfiltered_modulated_audio

Adding Output Filtering

After AC coupling the output with C1, I added a T-filter comprising C2, L1 and C3.

With no modulating input connected, this has turned the square wave output from the oscillator into a nice clean sine wave - the 1MHz carrier:

scope_carrier

Connecting a 1kHz sine wave (amplitude 500mV) to the audio input, the modulation can be seen quite clearly in this peak trace:

scope_1khz_am

SimpleCrystalTransmitter_bb_build2

Putting it on Protoboard

To snapshot the circuit for my project archive, I transferred the circuit to protoboard with the following layout:

protoboard_layout

Testing it with a commercial receiver. At this range the little wire antenna is not necessary. Range is quite short - measured in feet, not miles!

SimpleCrystalTransmitter_test

Credits and References

About LEAP#470 RadioAMTransmitter
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This page is a web-friendly rendering of my project notes shared in the LEAP GitHub repository.

LEAP is just my personal collection of 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 (IMHO!).

The projects are usually inspired by things found wild on the net, or ideas from the sources such as:

Feel free to borrow liberally, and if you spot any issues do let me know. See the individual projects for credits where due. There are even now a few projects contributed by others - send your own over in a pull request if you would also like to add to this collection.