[time-nuts] Using speaker / earphone for PPS testing (not a question)

[John Moran, Scawby Design]

Bob kb8tq - Wed, 22 Apr 2020 07:46:34 -0400

Said -

>
A lot also depends on what sort of voltage / power the speaker is expecting. 
If it's a high impedance voice coil gizmo things aren't going to be as easy as
with a piezo gizmo designed to work in a 1.3V battery powered greeting card. 

Where did I leave that 10KV output amplifier ?.. should be easy to find ?. :)
>

10kV may be a little excessive for normal devices and ears.

However, Texas Instruments make some rather nice piezoelectric haptic drivers that include an on-chip boost voltage generator that can supply up to 200v to drive the piezo disc ... more than enough to drive someone mad after a few hours of 1PPS ticking in the cellar. The device is a DRV8662 and is available from Digikey for $3.35. It is a small-pitch device (0.5mm) but not impossible to solder.

I will order a couple and see how they perform. I think I have some 4kHz resonant piezo discs that should ring quite nicely ... even when hit by a narrow pulse ... at 200v.

Data sheet here -

http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/drv8662.pdf

There are a couple of other information sheets referenced at the end of the data sheet.

John