9 ms·
RIP Hans Camenzind, Inventor Of The 555 Timer
- Renaud 14y agoSo many found memories playing with that 555. It was a bit of magic in a small cheap package that any kid could use to build cool stuff. It's amazing that this little chip has managed to stay so popular for so long.
- jrockway 14y agoThough it's kind of amazing that microcontrollers are now almost the same price as a single 555 timer.
- HeyLaughingBoy 14y agoI know, right? Someone recently contracted with me to build them a circuit to prevent accidental triggering of a pushbutton. So I did something where a double-click of the pushbutton results in a single contact closure output. Entire design was done in an 8-pin Tiny13 that cost about $0.50 @ qty 10 and the PC board is barely larger than the switch itself! Still amazes me that I can buy an entire computer for fifty cents.
- joezydeco 14y agoI was boggled by reading Bunnie Huang's diagnosis of some counterfeit SD cards. The SD card manufacturers have realized it's cheaper to put an entire ARM processor on each SD card to diagnose and bypass bad blocks of flash instead of using a very expensive machine to do the testing. Think about that for a sec.
- gall 14y agoThis was two months ago.
- 3rd3 14y agoNooo, old news, life is too short..
- LolWolf 14y agoAhh, I remember toying around with a 555, it was kind of amazing, been so long, though, since the AVRs and other Micro/DSPs became the lead.
- steam 14y agoMy first IC - havent felt anywhere close to what I felt when I built my first 'siren' powered by a 555, a potentiometer and a cheap 4 ohms speaker.. RIP Hans.
- joe_bleau 14y agoDownload his book about designing analog ICs: http://www.designinganalogchips.com/ http://www.designinganalogchips.com/
- alister 14y agoThat's wonderful, thank you. I recommend Chapter 11 (starting at page 141 in the PDF file) for a detailed personal account of how he developed the 555 timer chip. I'm also finding that the first 30 pages of the book is a very readable introduction to how semiconductors and transistors work -- it's written from an engineering mindset as opposed to the usual physics point of view. Direct link to the book: http://www.designinganalogchips.com/_count/countdown.pl?designinganalogchips.pdf http://www.designinganalogchips.com/_count/countdown.pl?desi...
- eternalban 14y ago"Without any noise (or some sort of transient disturbance) no circuit would oscillate; it would just sit there, precariously balanced." Did not know. Learn something interesting on HN everyday ... /:
- denzil_correa 14y agoWell, true! Someone posted on a video on sound generation using IC 555 [0]. Sweet to the ears! [0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzaS1nuL8ck http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzaS1nuL8ck
- ableal 14y agoReputedly, amplifiers that oscillate, and oscillators that do not, are the two great fears of analog designers ...
- rbanffy 14y agoGuys... he died in August...
- microtherion 14y agoIndeed, but I only came across the obituary today; there seemed to be little discussion on HN at the time, and the retrothing writeup added some background to the story that I didn't see in the other obits.
- braum 14y agoDid someone post it on HN with some decent activity? If not I think this post will do. I don't remember seeing it on any tech sites two months ago.
- orangethirty 14y agoI have many cherished memories of playing with the 555 timer. It was what drove me to learn how to hack PICs, and then the Arduino. After that came the mini2440, and the fun never really stopped. I built the siren described by a fellow hacker below, annoying my then girlfriend (and now wife) to no end with it. Then I built some fun strobe lights with LEDs. All for a couple of bucks, and available at the local Radio Shack. I still have a couple of them laying around, and some PIC 16F84 too. Fun times. RIP fellow hacker.
- klochner 14y agoApropos of our ongoing patent debate: Interestingly, the design wasn't patented and companies like National Semiconductor and Fairchild soon released their own versions. This helped to push the price down and ensured that the chip would become ubiquitous in the decades that followed.
- 001sky 14y agoCamenzind went on to have a long and successful career, but none of his subsequent designs would impact the world like his simple little timer. In fact, IEEE Spectrum named it one of 25 microchips that shook the world in their May 2009 issue. -- Continued from above. Interesting, note the incentives vs the output.
- jessedhillon 14y agoI'm not sure what either of you are attempting to demonstrate with these excerpts. I read the fact that he didn't patent the 555 with some disappointment. He had a successful career, good; and yet, he deserved to capture some of the marginal product of his labor, not simply to go on to be promoted super-Executive-Senior-Engineer-Level-XII. In this case, he did later start and sell a company after he left Signetics, and his reputation from the 555 timer surely helped him to success in that. But to my mind not patenting the design clearly made it harder for him to partake in the direct rewards he deserved for creating such a useful circuit.
- kderbe 14y agoThose excerpts demonstrate that the 555 timer became significant in part because it was not patented. You could even argue that Camenzind wouldn't have been eulogized for his invention of the 555 timer if it wasn't for its success due to widespread copying.
- jessedhillon 14y agoThat would be a specious and incredibly naive argument. First A (unpatented invention), then B (success), ergo A causes B -- is that the proposal here? Wouldn't I just have to show the existence of only one invention which became popular, despite being patented, to disprove this? (If I didn't reject it on the grounds that it is fallacious reasoning) Yes, you could argue that he would not have been eulogized, but you would need to have a better argument and it would be speculative at best. Edit: sorry it's late, not trying to be a dick.
- braum 14y agoThe 555 was my introduction to ICs. It was an amazing little chip and I remember spending hours upon hours with it and a breadboard.
- tsotha 14y agoAh, I hated that chip, but I have to admit for the price and flexibility you pretty much had to have it in your toolbox.
- CamperBob2 14y agoWhat was to hate?
- tsotha 14y agoIt's basically a hobbyist's tool. If you wanted to make a simple circuit that would produce a "phaser" noise, it was great. If you were designing something that needed a stable oscillator you couldn't use a 555 because the oscillating frequency would vary tremendously with temperature. Same with the length of the pulse if you used it as a one-shot. At the company I worked in the late '80s the frustrated management banned its use altogether after a series of failures in the field were traced to designs that relied on the 555 to be more stable than it really was.
- CamperBob2 14y agoIf you were designing something that needed a stable oscillator you couldn't use a 555 because the oscillating frequency would vary tremendously with temperature. Same with the length of the pulse if you used it as a one-shot. Those are all properties of the capacitors used, primarily, followed by Vcc stability. The 555 itself is a very long way down the list of Things That Make Oscillators Drift. Did you try polystyrene or polypropylene capacitors, or NPO ceramics? Supply pushing was also improved with the 7555 CMOS part, as I recall. At the company I worked in the late '80s the frustrated management banned its use altogether after a series of failures in the field were traced to designs that relied on the 555 to be more stable than it really was. Sounds enlightened.
- tsotha 14y ago>The 555 itself is a very long way down the list of Things That Make Oscillators Drift. Well, this is true, but the chip put constraints on the types of circuits you ended up with. >Did you try polystyrene or polypropylene capacitors, or NPO ceramics? Eh, I don't recall, as this was 25 years ago. Probably. We were making one or two of each product, so the cost of the parts was a rounding error compared to development and test. >Sounds enlightened. They had been burned a few times in a sort of public way. Yeah, it was overkill. On the other hand by that time you could already buy phase locked loops on a chip, so there wasn't really a reason to keep using the 555 as an oscillator unless you were making something that had to use really cheap parts.
- Dylanlacey 14y agoAww man! I missed this when it happened. I can be dismissive of Arduino-based timing projects, driven in part by cherished memories of making LEDs blink and speakers chirp annoying through use of a 555. RIP Hans.
- jrockway 14y agoThat was my thought too until I realized that an ATtiny costs maybe 50 cents more than a 555 timer.
- aortega 14y agoUsing an arduino for a timer is a spectacular waste of resources and very bad engineering (unless you already need the arduino), you might as well use a Core i7 to blink a led. The pricing will be about the same, you pay for the plastic package and shipping. Silicon price is very low.
- jrockway 14y agoIsn't having two factories, one to produce a 555 and the other to produce an ATtiny, the waste of resources? I personally prefer to only have to keep one chip in stock; the factory-calibrated RC oscillator is more accurate than what I would build out of discrete components anyway. (Also, an ATtiny is not an Arduino. The Arduino chips cost like $5, an ATtiny is 50 cents. ATtinys have much less flash, EEPROM, and ROM. But can still produce a nice square wave :)
- Dylanlacey 14y agoAn ATtiny? Sure! A full-blown Arduino? Hells no.
- jrockway 14y agoThat you would have to pay an extra dollar for.
- Stratoscope 14y agoAh, I loved the 555. I used it when it first came out to build blue boxes [1]. Of course, the frequency drifted all over the place and I was constantly having to retune the things. Even so, it was such a fun and easy chip to work with. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_box http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_box
- dmmalam 14y ago555 was the first IC I played at school when I was 12. Was always amazed with how many things you could do with it.
- hinathan 14y agoI feel compelled to point out a clever comment (not my own) on the linked page: "127 kOhm * 470 uF silence for the fellow." i.e. using those values for the external resistor and capacitor would result in a moment of silence (followed by another and another, I suppose)
- fhars 14y agoResistance times capacity is just time, 127kV/A * 470uAs/V = 59.7s, i.e. one minute.
- harshadura 14y agowow that's interesting!
- SpacemanSpiff 14y agoThe 555 design contest winners (from 4/2011): http://www.555contest.com/2011/04/the-555-contest-winners-announcement/ http://www.555contest.com/2011/04/the-555-contest-winners-an... I especially like the adding machine made from 102 555s: http://www.vk2zay.net/article/258 http://www.vk2zay.net/article/258
- latchkey 14y agoOh, that brings back memories... my heathkit flashing led armband soldering project...
- GigabyteCoin 14y ago(from wikipedia) "As of 2003, it was estimated that 1 billion (555 timer) units are manufactured every year." Wow.
- sbashyal 14y ago555 timer was a milestone in my hacking endeavors. RIP Hans Camenzind.
- tisme 14y agoThat's one of the few chips that I still remember the pin-out for decades later. And a bunch of 74's. I don't know how many of those I consumed but they were a pretty steady item on the shopping list. RIP.
- buro9 14y agoFrom the article this link to an IEEE Spectrum article on 25 Microchips That Shook The World is a pretty good read: http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/processors/25-microchips-that-shook-the-world/0 http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/processors/25-microc... I was going to submit that but HN dupe check prevents it (it was originally submitted 1,001 days ago). Unfortunately it also appears that you can not discuss HN submissions that old, so there is no appropriate place to then discuss the other chips in that article. Of particular interest to me is the DMD (Digital Micromirror Device). I had not really thought about how a digital projector might work, but if I had I would've said that it would be screen based. I wouldn't have guessed that the light would be projected at a microchip which would then reflect back only the pixels to be lit using incredibly small mirrors. And that this would happen so quick that the light would be sent through a gel of colour and would cycle through red, green, blue, and that the mirrors would reflect only a given colour at that moment for the pixel concerned.
- aidenn0 14y agoTo be fair the DMDs in projectors are a fairly recent innovation. I was interested in projectors in HS, and at that time all projectors were either CRT or LCD based. However, DMDs were an "exciting new technology" that had promises for cinema projection since they could be significantly brighter than the CRT and LCD projectors of the time. I certainly didn't think they would be available in home projectors in under a decade like they were (though the color wheel certainly helped with that)
- kqr2 14y agoForrest M. Mims' 555 Timer IC Circuits really opened the door for me on what the 555 could do. http://www.amazon.com/Engineers-Mini-Notebook-Timer-Circuits-276-5010/dp/B000MN54A6 http://www.amazon.com/Engineers-Mini-Notebook-Timer-Circuits... It has since been republished in: http://www.amazon.com/Timer-Amp-Optoelectronic-Circuits-Projects/dp/0945053290 http://www.amazon.com/Timer-Amp-Optoelectronic-Circuits-Proj...
- denzil_correa 14y agoThe 555 Timer was one of the fundamental IC's of my deeply rooted electronic fundamentals even though I am a modern day computer scientist. I remember using the 555 as a flip flop, a Schmitt trigger and to demonstrate a Monostable circuit. RIP Hans - you touched my life!
- bilbo0s 14y agoThe 555 really was cool. I remember being in middle school way back in the day working with 555's. At that time, I had trouble reading resistance values without resorting to a color reference chart, but the 555 I knew inside and out. When you think about it, a design would have to be 'Uber-Elegant' to have a middle school kid be able to understand it like that. For the time, I think it was. (As an aside, I can remember going ballistic on one of my friends who soldered one to a board. I would only use them on breadboards because I thought they were too 'valuable'. LOL! Money in middle school terms!) I LOVED those 555's. Good times.
- dhimes 14y agoWhen those white breadboards came out that allowed you to wire entire circuits with no soldering at all it changed my life. Until then we would wire wrap, or solder to pieces of copper wire used as posts stuck in, erm, breadboard. chips always went into a socket holder whose leads were then soldered to the breadboard (or wire-wrapped). My first was a HeathKit digital electronics course which contained power supplies, sources of +5/0 V, and leds to read output. Man, this takes me back...
- VLM 14y agoLove the chip, the guys a hero up there with the also recently departed Bob Pease and Jim Williams. I realize this is hacker news and pretty digital heavy, so I do feel the need to point out that "Incredibly, he created the chip alone, spending a year designing it by hand as a freelancer." and "His design incorporated 23 transistors, 15 resistors and a pair of diodes." is in the analog EE world not so much incredible as "probably about typical months design productivity". As usual in the analog world R+D and "productification stuff" and extensive testing burned up the other 11 months. So Pease, Williams, and now Camenzind are gone. Hard to believe Widlar's been gone 20 years, now he was a guy who packed 2000 years equivalent of wild heroic living into, unfortunately, only about half a century. Losing a whole generation of analog arch-wizards. Sad.
- itmag 14y agoWidlar's been gone 20 years, now he was a guy who packed 2000 years equivalent of wild heroic living Never heard of him but now you got me curious. Do tell more.
- aortega 14y agoThe first thing you usually do with the 555 is to blink a LED, that's the universal "hello world" of electronics. Then, you can connect a speaker and do funny noises. Can't compare it with a PIC or any uC, they are much more complex devices to operate. When you are 10 year old it blows your mind.
- bhz 14y agoNot-entirely-related, but, RetroThing is a great site for all of you retro enthusiasts. They have a lot of actual original content, versus all the regurgitated stuff on all the other sites. (Not HN news though, this is all good regurgitated stuff!) ;D Disclaimer: I'm friends with one of the writers/editors/major contributors(?) of RetroThing.