ECE 345

Honors Design Project

Jonathan Katt
4-19-2016
Instructor: G. M. Wierzba

In the November, 1996 issue of Popular Electronics, John C. Thomas made a

submission called Do Not Disturb to an article by John Yacono entitled Telephone
Circuits. In these few paragraphs, Thomas suggested the designs of two circuits
that would indicate whether a telephone was on or off the hook. Thomas, however,
only gave schematics of his circuits and declined to specify the values of the
resistors needed for the circuits to function. The first circuit, which used two
separate LEDs to indicate the status of the phone, was given to us in full detail in
the instructions for this project. The advantage of the second circuit is that it only
uses one LED as opposed to two, which makes the circuit marginally simpler.
However, the same amount of resistors, capacitors, and diodes are used so the
difference of one LED is miniscule at best. The task of this project was to determine
the resistor values required for the second circuit, which employs one bidirectional
LED, to function. This circuit was to operate in such a way that if the off-hook
voltage was below 13 Volts the LED would light red and above 13 Volts the LED
would light green. Also, the circuit was to never draw more than 3 milliamps of
current.

Code of Ethics Declaration

All of the attached work was performed by myself. No information
or data was obtained by any other means, including other students.

Signature

As stated in the Honors Design Project instructions, When a phone is onhook, there is approximately 50 VDC across the two input wires (Wierzba, 2016).
When the phone is then taken off-hook, the voltage across the input wires drops
to about 7 VDC. John C. Thomas circuit is designed to indicate using LEDs whether

Figure 1: Schematic of John C. Thomas initial circuit design with resistor values given in the Honors Design Proj
the telephone is on-hook or off-hook. Thomas first circuit design, along with
resistor values given in the instructions from Professor Wierzba, is shown in Figure 1.
The tasks of the Honors Design Project were to analyze Thomas first circuit, modify
it according to given specifications, and determine what resistor values to use in
Thomas second circuit to produce the same performance as the modified first
circuit.

The first step of the laboratory procedure was to gather all the necessary
resistors to assemble Thomas first circuit as shown in Figure 1. Once all the
resistors were gathered, it was necessary to measure their actual resistance, as
these resistors all have a tolerance of 5%. The measured resistances and the
calculated percent error are shown in Table 1. Upon inspection, all of the resistors
used fall within the 5% tolerance and the circuit can be constructed.
Table 1: Theoretical and Measured Values of the Resistors used in the First Circuit.

Once the circuit was constructed, it was necessary to supply it with power.
Since input voltages from 7.5 to 50 Volts were to be used, two power supplies were
required to be connected in order that they would both supply power to the circuit.
A simple schematic of this setup is shown in Figure 2. With power supplied to the
circuit, the Digital Multi-Meter was used to measure the voltages at all nodes of the
circuit. The variation of the voltage at node 3 (referred to as V 3) was observed as
the power supplies were varied. According to the circuit analysis, V 3 is always 1.4
Volts lower than the input voltage because at any given time two of the IN4002
diodes are in use, and these each cause a 0.7 Volt drop. It was observed that the
Red LED turns off at V3 = 8.0 Volts. Simultaneously, the green LED lit very dimly.
This value of V3 was deemed consistent with the analysis of the circuit given in the
project
instructions,
andof
thus
the experiment
continued.
The
power supplies
were
Figure
2: Schematic
connected
power supplied
which
powered
the circuits.
varied so that V3 was equal to 5.6, 8, 12, 18, and 48.6 Volts. At each of these values
of V3, the voltages of the other eight nodes in the circuit were measured and
recorded. These values are shown in Table 2, along with the status of the red and
green LEDs. One value of V3 stood out as a value of interest, and that was V 3 = 8.0
Volts. This was the value at which the red LED turned off and the green LED
became dimly lit. This means that for an input voltage of 9.6 Volts or below, the
circuit would display a red LED meaning the telephone is off-hook, and above 9.6
Volts the green LED lights which indicates that the telephone is on-hook.
After all the node voltages in the circuit were measured, the actual resistor
values from Table 1 were used to repeat the circuit analysis done in pages 2-6 of the
Honors Design Project instruction booklet. The results of these calculations can be
found in Table
calculated
percent
errorNode
between
the voltage
Table3.2:The
Measured
Voltages
at each
in Thomas
First values
Circuit
measured in the circuit and the voltages calculated using the analysis procedure are
listed in Table 4. The circuit was then modified so that if the input voltage was
below 13 Volts the red LED would light. In other words, V 3 was to be 11.6 Volts, due
to the voltage drop over the diodes. It was decided that changing the value of
Resistor 3 would be the simplest strategy for modifying the circuit. Analysis was
performed on the circuit with the red LED lit and V 3 = 11.6 Volts. Using the
measured values for all the other resistors, it was calculated that Resistor 3 was to
measure 74 (k). Since there is no 74 (k) resistor, it was decided that the best
course of action was to use the one with resistance closest to this value and
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continue from that point if needed. That resistor was an 82 (k) resistor. With the
new resistor in place, the power supplies were turned on and V 3 was again
measured using the Digital Multi-Meter. The power supplies were varied until the
transition point was found where the red LED turned off and the green LED was lit.
Conveniently, this point very close to 11.6 Volts, and so the modification was
Table 5: Node Voltages of the Modified Version of Thomas First Circuit

considered a success. Node voltages were then measured for each node of the
modified circuit, these are shown in Table 5.
John C. Thomas suggested a second circuit as an alternate design of the
Table 3: Calculated Node Voltages following the Analysis Given and using Measured Resistances

phone-use indicator circuit. A schematic of this circuit is shown in Figure 3. The

Table 4: Percent Error between the Measured and Calculated Node Voltages of Thomas First Circuit

final task of this experiment was to choose resistors to implement with this circuit to
make function the same as the modified version of the first circuit: the off-hook
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voltage was to be 13 Volts or less. Initially, the same resistor values as the modified
circuit were used. This, however, resulted in a transition voltage of about 46 Volts.
Through calculation it was determined that Resistors 1, 4, and 5 could keep their
original values. The method of trial and error was then used to fine tune the circuit
so that it would switch from the red LED to the green LED at V 3 = 13.0 Volts. The
final values of the resistors were 22 (k) for resistor 2 and 18 (k) for resistor 3.
The advantage of Thomas second circuit is that it only uses one LED as opposed to
two, which makes the circuit marginally simpler. However, the same amount of
resistors, capacitors, and diodes are used so the difference that one LED makes is
miniscule at best.

Figure 3: Schematic of Alternate Circuit given by Thomas in his Submission to Popular Electronics