Working title: Crystal sensor with Superheterodyne capabilities

Thesis Objectives:

•Make a crystal oscillator that will display the

oscillation of an A/T cut quartz crystal as voltage.
•Use a microcontroller to record the frequency
difference between the reference crystal and the
exposed crystal.
•Examine the effects on the crystal by various
elements, such as salted water and tomato sauce.
Working title: Crystal sensor with Superheterodyne capabilities

Crystals - Tiny wafers that oscillate at almost accurate frequencies.

- Very sensitive to outside elements.
- Can be used to detect changes while in contact to the
environment.

Current results:

•Used a Colpitts oscillator found on the net. It displayed good

results. It was used all the way.

•Torroids were wound to make a superheterodyne circuit,

subtracting the frequency from a reference frequency and an
experiment crystal. Difference of frequency was acquired.

•Found circuit for dividing the frequency of the reference

crystal, whose quotient will be used as reference frequency for
the second stage of frequency subtraction. It functioned well
on simulation.
Working title: Crystal sensor with Superheterodyne capabilities

Next tasks:

•Create a program from the microcontroller that displays the

numerical value of the difference frequency.
•
•Feed the output from the hardware into the program and
check the results with the values acquired from an
oscilloscope.
•
•Experiment the hardware with several liquids, and hopefully
derive a correlation between frequency and another factor.

Adviser: Celso B. Co
Members: Miguel Sobrio
Lean Sze
Carlo Chico