Using a Crystal on a Breadboard

[Kittu20]

Hello Everyone

I was previously using the internal oscillator for my PIC microcontroller, but now I want to switch to a crystal for better accuracy. My setup is currently on a breadboard, and I plan to use a crystal along with two ceramic capacitors on breadboard setup.

I’m curious—will using a crystal on a breadboard cause any connection or stability issues?

 

[D.A.(Tony)Stewart]

Keep the leads short and snug to uC ground pin along with denoising caps.

If driving any logic more than a few inches, 5cm add a series damping resistor like 22 to 33 ohms or more

If driving high current be careful about sharing ground and power use the lowest impedance source.

 

[andre_luis]

Think of the breadboard the same way as a regular PCB. Once each connection track below the grid can act as an antenna for RF signals, it could be beneficial to ground the unused tracks in the vicinity.

 

[ahsrabrifat]

Instead of a bare crystal and capacitors, use a pre-packaged crystal oscillator module. It may show more stable behaviour.

 

[dick_freebird]

If you're talking "solderless breadboard", this has
a lot of "stray C" and some unknown contact
resistance per connection, which can bleed or
damp the crystal loop. The circulating AC current
loop quality is key - loss and contamination,
"injection unlocking (ground beat-back from
some switching activity)" and so on.

Clock-in-a-can is meant to solve a lot of that.