Talk:Electronic oscillator

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Location of history section

Placing the history section at the bottom of the article rather than at the top does not make sense to me.

ICE77 (talk) 17:53, 7 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There should be an explanation of what the subject is about before offering the history of a subject that the reader, potentially, knows nothing about. SpinningSpark 20:03, 7 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, the reader is most likely to just want to know about oscillators, not their history. --Chetvorno^TALK 21:54, 7 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

They might wat to know about history, but at the very least, any terms and ideas that are used in the history need to be presented in the article in their proper context first, otherwise the history will not be intelligible. SpinningSpark 22:00, 7 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Leave as is. Considering that this is a technical article about a small, though important topic on circuits, I think that the prime interest of most visitors is the technical side. Together with the reasons given above I vote for leaving the history section where it is. Purgy (talk) 06:08, 8 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I support Spinningspark's recent move of this section so I guess that's a Leave as is. History is often the first section in an article but I think it makes sense to learn about the topic first in this case. ~Kvng (talk) 14:16, 14 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Link anchor broken

The first image on the page has a description saying: "A popular op-amp relaxation oscillator." Here, the words "op-amp relaxation oscillator" link to this wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relaxation_oscillator#Comparator-based_electronic_relaxation_oscillator

Here, the site linked to is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relaxation_oscillator

And it anchors to the line labelled: Comparator-based_electronic_relaxation_oscillator

It seems the relaxation oscillator article was edited. Someone please re-link it — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.6.36.173 (talk) 15:59, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

New section "Theory of feedback oscillators"

I added a new section on how linear oscillators work, "Theory of feedback oscillators". I plan to improve the sourcing and add some graphs illustrating the gain and output waveforms. --Chetvorno^TALK 14:04, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Circuitmod animation is a great idea.

I just wanted to say how much I love the use of an animation of a relaxation oscillator in Circuitmod with the scope traces for the cap and output.

I absolutely love Circuitmod and personally found it was a great was to visually understand circuits. I don't think you could have chosen a better image. It shows a great deal of useful information at a glance.

I think it would be a great idea to include more images/animations like this for other articles at least on relatively simple circuits.

Here's hoping this is the start of a new trend. VoidHalo (talk) 18:58, 10 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I made that animation. I did it in circuitjs (which like circuit mod is a fork of Falstad's Java Circuit Simulator) fed into a gif recorder. I basically tried to make the simplest example and tried to keep the animation not too "busy" (so not distracting to readers). Em3rgent0rdr (talk) 02:49, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

also fyi I made 3 other animations in Diode logic, which didn't really have an example to begin with. Em3rgent0rdr (talk) 04:25, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

really? The addition to diode logic must have been relatively recent. I remember looking that up maybe 1-3 years ago to try and figure out how to make an inverter, if possible. I don't recall that it was possible. But I digress.

I should also mention, I LOVE the other physics applets he has on his site almost just as much. I had endless un with the 2D "wavetank". It's a shame that he doesn't seem to make them anymore.

My friends with masters degrees or PhDs keep oushing me to learn/use LTSpice or equivalent. I've played around with it. But for a guy who's just a hobbyist of 3 or 4 uears off and on, it's a bit much to learn. One day though.

Thanks for making these amazing contributions VoidHalo (talk) 15:03, 17 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

No dedicated page for linear oscillators

I think it would be a good idea to start a separate page for linear oscillators specifically. My reasoning is that if there is a page for relaxation oscillators, logically, you would expect there to be a page on linear oscillators.

But on a more practical note, linear oscillators are a quite varied and technical aspect of electronics, and circuit design in general. Heck, a good bit of analogue circuit design is making sure you don't accidentally create linear oscillators in your circuit.

So, it's safe to say it's quite a complex and multifaceted topic. To really donit justice and include a decent amount of information about them, I thinknit would be worthwhile to create a dedicated page in the same vein as relaxation oscillators. VoidHalo (talk) 02:00, 9 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A good summary of the technical analysis of linear oscillators is already included in the "Theory of feedback oscillators" section. The main thing I see that's missing is the theory of the other type of linear oscillator, the negative resistance oscillator. I was going to add a section on that, to finish it. What other facets do you feel are not covered? --Chetvorno^TALK 21:14, 9 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Now that younmentionnit. I did have a very hard time finding much about negative resistance oscillators. I had tried to learn about them some time ago and really didn't learn anything. Least of all, how they work. There probably is an explanation that perhaps didn't understand. It seems more likely.

I get that it's a bit more of an esoteric or niche subject. But having articles about esoteric or niche subjects is part of made wikipedia so successful. But I also realize that means the odds of more than a hand full of people contributing useful and technical information is much lower than with other articles.

I will say, though, that this hasn't happened to me much before. Usually, even if it is a niche topic, there's usually at least SOMETHING about it on the wiki. VoidHalo (talk) 05:32, 12 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Don't think all linear or harmonic oscillators produce sinusoidal output

The first sentence on harmonic oscillator says: "The linear or harmonic oscillator produces a sinusoidal output." But that doesn't seem true for all the circuits listed.

For example I checked on falstad's circuitjs and found in the menu Circuits -> Transistors -> Oscillators that there is a Hartley oscillator example which is somewhat similar to the picture of the Hartley oscillator in this wikipedia article, however the output voltage is NOT sinusoidal but instead contains a lot of higher frequency content.

I also suspect many of the other circuits listed in the "Harmonic oscillators" sections also don't produce pure sinusoids. Even if they resemble a sinusoid and have most energy in the fundamental frequency, if they have some any higher frequencies then the term "sinusoidal" shouldn't be used to describe them.

Edit: LC tank component of the Hartley oscillator does provide sinusoidal oscillation on its own. It is the amplification component, the transistor here, that is what makes the output ultimately non-sinusoidal. So maybe that sentence could be rewritten to be not that the output is sinusoidal, but rather that the source of the oscillation is sinusoidal.

Em3rgent0rdr (talk) 23:35, 9 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah. They all can produce a sinusoidal output, it's the sinusoidal oscillating current in the resonant circuit that keeps them on frequency. But the signal from the amplifier that drives the resonant circuit is usually a square wave or pulses. A high Q resonator like a tuned circuit or crystal will oscillate with a sine wave even though it is excited with a pulse. Designers have a choice of either waveform for the output. I agree that should be mentioned in the article, if you want to add it. --Chetvorno^TALK 02:20, 10 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, thanks. What you wrote "it's the sinusoidal oscillating current in the resonant circuit that keeps them on frequency" I think is the key distinction. I've made an edit incorporating that while keeping it short, so it now reads:

"Linear or harmonic oscillators work by amplifying a sinusoidal (or nearly-sinusoidal) oscillation in their resonant circuit."

I inserted "nearly-sinusoidal" cause I looked through one of the sources for that statement, and found this on page 224 of Electronics (fundamentals And Applications): "If the generated waveform is sinusoidal or nearly so with a definite frequency, the oscillator is said to be a sinusoidal oscillator." https://books.google.com/books?id=n0rf9_2ckeYC&q=%22sinusoidal%22&pg=PA224#v=snippet&q=%22sinusoidal%22&f=false So that "nearly so" was missing from the sentence. (That book actually just uses the term "sinusoidal oscillator" instead of linear or harmonic oscillator. Since the wording now has changed quite a bit from what is in that book I remove the citation from there. That book is cited elsewhere, so the reference remains in the article.) Em3rgent0rdr (talk) 03:07, 10 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]