For my final engineering project of the year, my team and I designed and created a speaker crossover network with three drivers (tweeter, midrange, woofer). In addition, we created a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to mimic the frequency outputs of the three drivers depending on the values of the inductors and capacitors within the ciruits.

       To begin, we learned the basics about resistors, capacitors, and inductors and how they add together within a circuit. We then learned how to find the impedence for each of them and how to add those impedences together. Putting our new knowledge into action, we mapped out three basic circuits, one for each driver (see image 1 below). Based on our circuit designs, we created several Matlab programs to help determine what values of inductors and capacitors to use for each driver to result in the proper frequency range (~1 kHz for the woofer, ~5 kHz for the tweeter, and inbetween for the midrange). Using these new programs, we created a GUI which varied capacitance and inductance for each circuit using sliders (see image 2 below). This helped us determine the best values to use when creating our physical crossover network.

      After determining our capacitor and inductor values, we worked with Dr. Bernstein in his lab to create our three circuits for the crossover network. To begin, we wound our own inductors and soldered together capacitors to attain the values we had previously calculated. Once those were all complete, we assembled our three circuits and attached them to the speaker setup in the lab (see images 3-6). Our final results can be seen in the video below.