8 ms·
Giant 555 Timer
- kryptonomist 5y agoInterview of the 555 creator, which I find fascinating: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3vpu67uu28 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3vpu67uu28
- mcphage 5y agoRelated is EvilMadScientist’s surface mount 555 kit: https://shop.evilmadscientist.com/productsmenu/922 https://shop.evilmadscientist.com/productsmenu/922
- krallja 5y agoThey also make a fully discrete kit: https://shop.evilmadscientist.com/productsmenu/652 https://shop.evilmadscientist.com/productsmenu/652
- Stratoscope 5y agoBoth versions of the kit use all discrete components. The difference is that the kit GP linked has surface-mount components, while the one you linked has through-hole components. I built the through-hole version a few years ago, and it was great fun to try some classic 555 circuits. If anyone is unsure of their soldering skills, the through-hole kit would likely be the easier one to start with. Evil Mad Scientist makes some awesome stuff.
- krallja 5y agoOops, yeah, you’re absolutely right.
- 2sk21 5y agoWhat a great project Idea! I have often looked at the internal schematic of the 555 and wondered if it could be made with discrete components - now I know that it is possible :-)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- logbiscuitswave 5y agoIf you want something in kit form, I’m a big fan of this: https://shop.evilmadscientist.com/productsmenu/652 https://shop.evilmadscientist.com/productsmenu/652 It’s a beautiful representation of a 555 timer in discrete component form - and functional too. The 555 timer itself is a pretty simple IC since it’s just a few dozen transistors and resistors at its core.
- CliffStoll 5y agoEvil Mad Scientist 555 timer kit is a beauty! Very sweet kit, and it looks wonderful.
- danielg0 5y agoFor those in the UK, the kit is also available through Pimoroni - https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/the-three-fives-kit-a-discrete-555-timer https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/the-three-fives-kit-a-dis...
- slig 5y agoDirect video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDjzL_fKQDE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDjzL_fKQDE edited out my comment.
- amatecha 5y agoNon-advertising-laden link :) https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=GDjzL_fKQDE https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=GDjzL_fKQDE
- SahAssar 5y agoI think Hackaday deserves better than being called blogspam.
- _fs 5y agoYou really think hackaday is blogspam? The youtube poster likely posted the article at hackaday. Every embedded guy I know loves this site.
- slig 5y agoI stand corrected.
- kingcharles 5y agoAnd the history of the 555: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/555_timer_IC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/555_timer_IC
- tomxor 5y agoPeople complain about thin computers these days... but this, right here, is the core of the issue: we need thicker ICs, only then will we finally get back our much missed "luggable" computers. No more electron tunnelling, electro migration, super scalar nonsense. We need good ol' fashion sturdy, reliable, hand drawn ICs.
- mysterypie 5y agoSince the original 555 was developed in 1971, I'm wondering if the inventor[1] or Signetics, the company where he worked, would have made a similar physical mock-up in those days before electronic circuit simulation software existed. [1] Apparently it was a single electronics engineer, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Camenzind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Camenzind
- Animats 5y agoProbably, although by then you could get op amps and flip-flops as ICs. A 555 timer is two comparators, a flip-flop, an inverter, and a power transistor. If you have those building blocks, you can make one easily.
- retrac 5y agoYes, almost certainly. Designs were routinely breadboarded into the 1980s. Maybe discrete transistors, maybe a mix of transistors and some simpler ICs. Even big designs got the treatment -- the Intel 4004 creators speak of a breadboard prototype in one of the oral histories. My impression is that such prototypes were something given up quite reluctantly. It's the best way to verify your design works, after all. But eventually ICs developed enough. Either so tiny in process, that they behave electrically very different from circuits with macro components. Or simply so large in design, that it would cost more to build a discrete component prototype than just do a prototype mask run.
- mwattsun 5y agoThis is awesome. I built a metronome from a Forest Mims book and parts I bought at RadioShack back in the day, so it's nice to see the timer in all it's glory. One of my biggest surprises when I reported for duty on a submarine in the early 80's was that most of the electronic systems were discrete components. https://www.radioshack.com/products/getting-started-in-electronics-by-forrest-mims-ebook https://www.radioshack.com/products/getting-started-in-elect...
- dceddia 5y agoThe other day, an HN post showed RadioShack.com has changed hands and the home page is all about a new type of crypto. Just checked, still is. I’m surprised that RadioShack link still works, including the Add to Cart and Checkout buttons! Maybe the new owners are keeping the old e-commerce side alive?
- mwattsun 5y agoI was wondering that too. I did some road trips in 2020 and was surprised to run across a functioning RadioShack in Montpelier, Idaho [1] so it's not dead. There's even a Tandy Leather store in Portland [2]. According to Wikipedia, the eCommerce portal is a going concern along with 500 franchises [3] and the branding, which is now owned by Tai Lopez and Alex Mehr who are taking into crypto-currency. The Radio Shack saga continues. Probably not interesting to younger people, but I have to admire the staying power of the brand when companies come and go all the time. Especially when I consider the Fry's Electronics in Silicon Valley are all shut down or selling junk on consignment. I don't know what happened there. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/search/radioshack/@42.3132621,-111.310369,14.67z https://www.google.com/maps/search/radioshack/@42.3132621,-1... [2] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tandy+Leather+Portland+-+21/@45.5032478,-122.5335422,11.48z/data=!4m9!1m2!2m1!1standy!3m5!1s0x5495a3944643fc01:0xb1c514ee0911cee8!8m2!3d45.55817!4d-122.5263451!15sCgV0YW5keSIDiAEBWgciBXRhbmR5kgELY3JhZnRfc3RvcmU https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tandy+Leather+Portland+-+2... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RadioShack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RadioShack
- Fatnino 5y ago
- emsy 5y agoFurther gold in the comment section: >Eh can be done with a single 555 timer…
- mirroregami 5y agoFeel free to double check my math, but a modern M1 CPU with its ~16 billion transistors would be about 380 million times bigger (imagine a square ~1.7 miles on a side)
- firethief 5y agoIt would take an electric signal about 40ns to travel from the center to one corner and back, and a signal certainly needs to do more than that in a clock cycle, so the physical limit on its operational frequency would be well below 25 kHz. If you want comparable computing power to a regular M1, you'd need to build a tower of them at least 100,000 high. On the plus side, you could build a city on the stack and no one would need heating in the winter. The cluster should be powerful enough to coordinate the traffic lights. Synergy!
- retrac 5y ago> The cluster should be powerful enough to coordinate the traffic lights. This probably says more about how bloaty modern software development is, than the capabilities of your hypothetical macro-M1. You wouldn't need a cluster. Just one should do. The entire traffic light system of San Francisco ran on a few PDP-8 controllers, once. About as fast as the macro M1 at 25 kHz. (Even at 25 kHz, with parallel execution, it'd still be completing hundreds of thousands of 64-bit-data instructions per second, running circles around something like the original IBM PC or even the early Macintosh.) With hardware so cheap and software stacks so deep these days, we often grossly overestimate the number of cycles really necessary to complete a task.
- firethief 5y agoWell I assumed it would be an electron app because getting it done with a shedload of giant 555 timers wouldn't be as funny :)
- tgv 5y ago40ns = 25MHz.
- ncmncm 5y agoI read an interview with the original inventor of the 555. He was actually embarrassed at its crudeness, and would have done it very differently at the later date. I guess there was an attempt at an updated version, but it didn't sell.
- scottlamb 5y agoFound the interview: [1] > The thing is that this is not a good design (the 555). I had a few years of experience, I’d say about five years, but I had no teacher, and I had to learn it by myself. > You know it was really the beginning of design, so looking at it now, I would say “I wouldn’t do it like that again”. But nobody has actually changed it - it is still the same. They have shrunk it, they shrunk the dimensions. It was a 10 micrometer design, that was the standard size. You could make it in four (micrometers) now. This is more die per wafer, but nobody has changed the arrangement or the schematic. > As a timer, you know, you trigger it and it runs for a certain time, it is very good. It has a temperature coefficient of like 23 parts per million. Over a large temperature range, that’s like .1 %. Its very stable. In free running mode, as an oscillator, its not so good, about 150 parts per million. And that you could improve down to about 10 ppm. So you could make an improved product. I’m amazed and stunned that in 30 years, somebody hasn’t looked at the schematic and said, “I can make this better”, so for the same area and same cost, and then they have a better product. Nobody has done that. [1] http://www.semiconductormuseum.com/Transistors/LectureHall/Camenzind/Camenzind_Page9.htm http://www.semiconductormuseum.com/Transistors/LectureHall/C...
- hulitu 5y agoOf course he could make it better. Everybody can. The issue is if it makes sense. The only engineering science where improving something is (stil) cheap is SW. Although SW seems to be cursed and almost every improvement they make is a complete redesign. 555 is a cheap signal generator. It is very good at what he does. When you need a better one you can have a uC ( which you need to program and test) or a synthetiser ( which is more expensive). No need to thrash it just because it is old.
- 5y ago
- preddy2020 5y ago
- nickcw 5y agoI build something out of a 555 just the other day! https://twitter.com/njcw/status/1467522736000053256 https://twitter.com/njcw/status/1467522736000053256 Its the primary (20kV) for a tesla coil. The 555 toggles a power MOSFET which drives the primary of a car ignition coil making a nice crackly 20 kV spark. The 555 was my first introduction to electronics. I still have the 555 book my dad gave me back in the 80s!
- immmmmm 5y agothere's a youtube channel where the guy build a 555 out of vacuum tube: https://youtu.be/bjAlzA4Cyys https://youtu.be/bjAlzA4Cyys he also made a working 1 bit processor the same way: https://youtu.be/q9oB-6963DU https://youtu.be/q9oB-6963DU