[SOLVED] 4538 IC timing consistency problems

[Vigennallack]

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!

 

[Pjdd]

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.

 

[Vigennallack]

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!