4 ms·

The juxtaposition between the cleanliness of the software and the absolute travesty of a schematic is jarring. But it still works! I applaud the author for wad

The juxtaposition between the cleanliness of the software and the absolute travesty of a schematic is jarring. But it still works! I applaud the author for wading into analog electronics. Pretty much everyone nowadays would just put a timer on a micro and be done in 2 minutes. No fun in that. There is something to be said about the minimal elegance of purely analog designs, and a special rewarding feeling for wrangling electrons in their native habit rather than their boxed up binary bins.

jabedude 1y ago
I haven't touch anything like this in a good while, how cheap could I get a simple Arduino style chip with a few gpio to drive a yellow LED in 2025?
- roboror 1y ago
  Like $2 if you're patient
- alias_neo 1y ago
  You could grab any Atmega328p or similar DIL on eBay for a couple of quid, maybe less in batches. I've got dozens of them in my electronics drawers I don't really use anymore since ESP32 dev boards are so cheap and capable for home projects.
- bombela 1y ago
  I have a bag of attiny13a that cost me $0.20 per chip. It is fully self contained. Just add a very small capacitor, give it from 2.8V to 5V. And then you program it the way you want. You can even program and debug it via a single pin if you wish. At this cost for a hobbyist it's just hard to beat. It can be anything you want it to be in a few lines of code. I personally write Rust for it, not Arduino C++, but it would work just the same.
  - Liftyee 1y ago
    What toolchain do you use to compile Rust for it? I have about had enough of undebuggable random Arduino segfaults.
    - bombela 1y ago
      The main Rust compiler. https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/rustc/platform-support/avr-none.html https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/rustc/platform-support/avr...
      - stavros 1y ago
        Do you know of any sort of tutorial for this? I'd love to have a play.
        bombela 1y ago
        I do not, sorry. You can read the datasheet of the chip learn everything about it. You can then search online for some implementation of firmware uploader/programmer like "avrdude". Those chips are very simple, all controlled by toggling bits and values in registers.
        stavros 1y ago
        I'll try that, thanks.
- alnwlsn 1y ago
  For an "official" answer (programmable from Arduino IDE, genuine new chips) you can get an ATTINY202 from DigiKey or Mouser for $0.50 in qty. 1.
- cluckindan 1y ago
  If you just need it to blink at some interval, get a NE555 for a dime. Granted, you can almost get a microcontroller for that price…
  - dgacmu 1y ago
    You actually can: The Puya PY32 ranges from about $0.08 on up (well, $0.15 if you only want to buy 5, but the cheapest one is $0.0959 in qty 200 and $0.0676 in qty 5000+). ARM Cortex m0 in a 10-pin ESSOP-10 surface mount package: https://lcsc.com/product-detail/Microcontrollers-MCU-MPU-SOC_PUYA-PY32F002AA15M6TU_C5292058.html?s_z=n_PY32 https://lcsc.com/product-detail/Microcontrollers-MCU-MPU-SOC... Kind of mind-blowing. 24mhz 32-bit computer for under a dime. But you'll learn more about the analog-ish world and not need to deal with SMD if you go the 555 route. And it'll save you power vs the astable monovibrator with NPN transistors.
    - dccoolgai 1y ago
      555s are so much fun. It's bananas how much you can do with that chip and a few dirt-cheap resistors and capacitors. Make has a really nice little book where they walk you through some simple projects on a breadboard with 555s, transistors, etc. https://www.amazon.com/How-Use-Breadboard-Make-Handbook/dp/168045403X https://www.amazon.com/How-Use-Breadboard-Make-Handbook/dp/1...
- bluescrn 1y ago
  Search YouTube for '10 cent microcontroller' to learn about the absolute cheapest chips. For £3.50 you can get an ESP32 module with WiFi and Bluetooth (e.g. https://thepihut.com/products/esp32-c3-mini-development-board https://thepihut.com/products/esp32-c3-mini-development-boar...) (A regular Arduino board might still be the best choice if you're just learning/tinkering though)
- andoando 1y ago
  You can get a bluetooth/wifi enabled microcontroller like a Pi Pico 2 for $5 or a full on computer running linux for $15 (Pi zero 2)
- the__alchemist 1y ago
  Buy any dev board that includes an LED. Nordic, ST, Espressif... doesn't matter for something like this.
diggan 1y ago
> Pretty much everyone nowadays I think it depends on the ecosystem. It's true much of the "maker" community tends to embrace whatever solution is the cheapest, fastest and easiest to get something working out the door, but on the other hand, the DIY synth community tends to be the opposite (in my experience at least), favoring simple schematics and "back to basics" building, even sometimes going as far as trying to skip any sort of prebuilt ICs.
- JKCalhoun 1y ago
  This would include people building guitar pedals.
btbuildem 1y ago
Honestly, it's the easiest onramp for people coming from a software background. Analog circuits are HARD, but rewarding. And as you ramp up to various ICs, things start to ~~~ make sense ~~~ in a wonderful way. Oh, and also the battery life!
JKCalhoun 1y ago
Yeah, for me, analog is the exciting domain — my undiscovered country. I have played with vacuum tubes as well and thoroughly enjoyed it. Transistors were, for some reason, seemingly unknowable to me. But I made a kind of "transistor playground" [1] based around Forrest Mims III book [2] and then enjoyed playing with them. [1] https://imgur.com/a/dChq4AZ https://imgur.com/a/dChq4AZ [2] https://archive.org/details/forrest-mims-basic-semiconductor-circuits https://archive.org/details/forrest-mims-basic-semiconductor... Edit: actually, I had forgotten it was a transistor logic playground for I made for creating logic gates with transistors. Based on another Forrest Mims book: https://archive.org/details/engineersmininot00mims https://archive.org/details/engineersmininot00mims
- zavec 1y ago
  That looks awesome, nice work! Very clean.
justaj 1y ago
I still can't get over the fact that all electronics schematics is actually in reverse and everyone is still fine with that.
- the__alchemist 1y ago
  Could you explain? Most of what I work with seems non-directional, except in cases like Diodes and transistors.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

jabedude 1y ago

I haven't touch anything like this in a good while, how cheap could I get a simple Arduino style chip with a few gpio to drive a yellow LED in 2025?

roboror 1y ago
Like $2 if you're patient
alias_neo 1y ago
You could grab any Atmega328p or similar DIL on eBay for a couple of quid, maybe less in batches. I've got dozens of them in my electronics drawers I don't really use anymore since ESP32 dev boards are so cheap and capable for home projects.
bombela 1y ago
I have a bag of attiny13a that cost me $0.20 per chip. It is fully self contained. Just add a very small capacitor, give it from 2.8V to 5V. And then you program it the way you want. You can even program and debug it via a single pin if you wish. At this cost for a hobbyist it's just hard to beat. It can be anything you want it to be in a few lines of code. I personally write Rust for it, not Arduino C++, but it would work just the same.
- Liftyee 1y ago
  What toolchain do you use to compile Rust for it? I have about had enough of undebuggable random Arduino segfaults.
  - bombela 1y ago
    The main Rust compiler. https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/rustc/platform-support/avr-none.html https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/rustc/platform-support/avr...
    - stavros 1y ago
      Do you know of any sort of tutorial for this? I'd love to have a play.
      - bombela 1y ago
        I do not, sorry. You can read the datasheet of the chip learn everything about it. You can then search online for some implementation of firmware uploader/programmer like "avrdude". Those chips are very simple, all controlled by toggling bits and values in registers.
        stavros 1y ago
        I'll try that, thanks.
alnwlsn 1y ago
For an "official" answer (programmable from Arduino IDE, genuine new chips) you can get an ATTINY202 from DigiKey or Mouser for $0.50 in qty. 1.
cluckindan 1y ago
If you just need it to blink at some interval, get a NE555 for a dime. Granted, you can almost get a microcontroller for that price…
- dgacmu 1y ago
  You actually can: The Puya PY32 ranges from about $0.08 on up (well, $0.15 if you only want to buy 5, but the cheapest one is $0.0959 in qty 200 and $0.0676 in qty 5000+). ARM Cortex m0 in a 10-pin ESSOP-10 surface mount package: https://lcsc.com/product-detail/Microcontrollers-MCU-MPU-SOC_PUYA-PY32F002AA15M6TU_C5292058.html?s_z=n_PY32 https://lcsc.com/product-detail/Microcontrollers-MCU-MPU-SOC... Kind of mind-blowing. 24mhz 32-bit computer for under a dime. But you'll learn more about the analog-ish world and not need to deal with SMD if you go the 555 route. And it'll save you power vs the astable monovibrator with NPN transistors.
  - dccoolgai 1y ago
    555s are so much fun. It's bananas how much you can do with that chip and a few dirt-cheap resistors and capacitors. Make has a really nice little book where they walk you through some simple projects on a breadboard with 555s, transistors, etc. https://www.amazon.com/How-Use-Breadboard-Make-Handbook/dp/168045403X https://www.amazon.com/How-Use-Breadboard-Make-Handbook/dp/1...
bluescrn 1y ago
Search YouTube for '10 cent microcontroller' to learn about the absolute cheapest chips. For £3.50 you can get an ESP32 module with WiFi and Bluetooth (e.g. https://thepihut.com/products/esp32-c3-mini-development-board https://thepihut.com/products/esp32-c3-mini-development-boar...) (A regular Arduino board might still be the best choice if you're just learning/tinkering though)
andoando 1y ago
You can get a bluetooth/wifi enabled microcontroller like a Pi Pico 2 for $5 or a full on computer running linux for $15 (Pi zero 2)
the__alchemist 1y ago
Buy any dev board that includes an LED. Nordic, ST, Espressif... doesn't matter for something like this.

diggan 1y ago

> Pretty much everyone nowadays I think it depends on the ecosystem. It's true much of the "maker" community tends to embrace whatever solution is the cheapest, fastest and easiest to get something working out the door, but on the other hand, the DIY synth community tends to be the opposite (in my experience at least), favoring simple schematics and "back to basics" building, even sometimes going as far as trying to skip any sort of prebuilt ICs.

JKCalhoun 1y ago
This would include people building guitar pedals.

btbuildem 1y ago

Honestly, it's the easiest onramp for people coming from a software background. Analog circuits are HARD, but rewarding. And as you ramp up to various ICs, things start to ~~~ make sense ~~~ in a wonderful way. Oh, and also the battery life!

JKCalhoun 1y ago

Yeah, for me, analog is the exciting domain — my undiscovered country. I have played with vacuum tubes as well and thoroughly enjoyed it. Transistors were, for some reason, seemingly unknowable to me. But I made a kind of "transistor playground" [1] based around Forrest Mims III book [2] and then enjoyed playing with them. [1] https://imgur.com/a/dChq4AZ https://imgur.com/a/dChq4AZ [2] https://archive.org/details/forrest-mims-basic-semiconductor-circuits https://archive.org/details/forrest-mims-basic-semiconductor... Edit: actually, I had forgotten it was a transistor logic playground for I made for creating logic gates with transistors. Based on another Forrest Mims book: https://archive.org/details/engineersmininot00mims https://archive.org/details/engineersmininot00mims

zavec 1y ago
That looks awesome, nice work! Very clean.

justaj 1y ago

I still can't get over the fact that all electronics schematics is actually in reverse and everyone is still fine with that.

the__alchemist 1y ago
Could you explain? Most of what I work with seems non-directional, except in cases like Diodes and transistors.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]