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How woud an experienced person "know" how to build the circuit?
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chris_leyson:

--- Quote ---So how do we design a circuit? We start out with the concept - what do we want/need?
From there we do what everyone here has already said: Look at what building blocks we can use
--- End quote ---
Exactly that ^^^
Over time you build up a mental tool box of circuits and/or techniques and as an engineer that's what you carry around in the grey matter. Once you've defined the problem you can sketch out a few circuit blocks or if it's unfamiliar territory you can search for a solution and see how other engineers have tackled the same problem. You may very well have a lot of other design parameters to think about, for example, performance, cost, size, efficiency, reliability etc. It all depends on the initial concept, sometimes it's just a case of putting together standard building blocks and sometimes you have to think "maybe I can combine some circuit techniqes and thereby build a better moustrap", but will it work ? If you can model and simulate your design then that's a bonus but sometimes there are things you just can't accurately model without spending a lot of time doing research and in that case it's quicker to build it and test it.

The other day I needed to add a monostable multivibrator to a design but it has to be teeny tiny, an LTC6993 in a 6-pin SOT23 package would fit but it needs programming resistors as well, costs about $3. Use an Atmel 6-pin ATtiny and you've got 2 monostables for $0.3 maybe, prices are ballpark. Sometimes thinking outside the box pays.

Beamin, just build stuff, poke it with a scope probe and literally see how it works or doesn't. You will learnt a lot more from things that don't work because you have to investigate why they didn't work and that way you can get a better insight or maybe intuitive grasp of how things should work. Gut feeling and intuition are also very important design tools but they have to be learnt, sometimes the hard way.

@Beamin, thanks for posting the Widlar Hassler video, I had completely forgotten about that design, maybe you can do it with an electret mic, an op-amp or transistor for a bit of gain and 6-pin or 8-pin micro with an A-D, just another way of solving a problem but in that application you get a lot more options by going digital, maybe some crude spectral analysis, just to target that really annoying colleague.
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