Long-Interval Pulse Generator

A rectangular-wave pulse generator with an extremely long period can be built using only two components: a National Semiconductor LM3710 supervisor IC and a 100-nF capacitor to eliminate noise spikes.This circuit utilises the watchdog and reset timers in the LM3710. The watchdog timer is reset when an edge appears on the WDI input (pin 4). If WDI is continuously held at ground level, there are not any edges and the watchdog times out. After an interval TB, it triggers a reset pulse with a duration TA and is reloaded with its initial value. The cycle then starts all over again. As a result, pulses with a period of TA + TB are present at the RESET output (pin 10).