[SOLVED] 4538 IC timing consistency problems

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Vigennallack

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Hello everyone!

I am trying to use the 4538 to produce a pulse.
It is used to filter a 32.768 kHz signal with an AND gate to create a certain number of pulses.
Unfortunately, the 4538 seems to have very poor precision.
The resulting numbers are very inconsistent, ranging from ~30-130 pulses.
An Arduino check with pulseIn() confirms this, giving pulse lengths from ~1300-3700 ms.

I know that a certain amount of variation would be caused by capacitor and resistor uncertainty but this seems a bit much.

Interestingly, sometimes the variation progresses almost sinusoidally.
Does anyone know what could be causing this?



Any help would be greatly appreciated!
 

The first thing to do in a case like this is to post your schematic - not just the 4538 and its timing elements, but also anything else associated with it.
 

Ah, I've managed to fix it
Turns out the power supply wasn't sourcing enough current to all my components and was causing a bunch of weird problems
A higher max current supply seems to have fixed it.

Thanks though!
 

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