Analog Devices AD9850 frequency synthesiser

AD9850 evaluation board, 45mm x 26mm

Connected to MYDEV2 PIC MSSP module for programming

SINA and QP outputs

Another visit to an online auction site and another electronics purchase. This time I spent $9 on an evaluation board for the AD9850 frequency synthesiser chip. Surely the 125MHz 'can' oscillator and the chip itself are individually worth more than that. However it was made in China.
I mounted it on a larger piece of experimenter board and connected its programming inputs to a microcontroller PIC18F4550 on my MYDEV2 PIC development board. Before the AD9850 will produce an output signal it has to be programmed.
So I wrote a few lines of code to use the PIC's Master Synchronous Serial Peripheral ,( MSSP ), interface module to send the 40 bits of frequency, phase and control data to the AD9850.
The resultant output signals are a sine wave ( CH1 yellow trace ) of 1.04V peak-peak directly from the chip's digital-analogue convertor, ( DAC ), and a variable pulse-width square wave ( CH2 blue trace ) of 5V peak-peak via the chip's comparator for use as an external clock.
I have intentionally allowed plenty of space on the experimenter board to fit a dedicated PIC later; probably the PIC18F14K22 as I already have one.
The AD9850 will be a useful signal source and clock generator upto about 40MHz.