Make:Electronics, Experiment 19: Learning Logic

With experiment 19 of Make:Electronics I’m entering the world of pure digital electronics. This experiment explains the basics of the 7400 family chips. It is also a prelude to experiment 20. First an LM7805 voltage regulator is used to to provide precisely 5 volts DC. Then a simple circuit is built around the 74HC00 chip […]

Atari Punk Console part 3: finished

I finally finished the Atari Punk Console (APC) that I blogged about previously. This time I worked on the external connections and the enclosure. First I took a cheap grey project box and drilled holes for the two potentiometers, speaker and LED into the lid. I also drilled a hole for the perf board and […]

DIY planter for tiny kitchen garden

My wife asked me to build two wooden boxes and a planter for her vegetables and herbs. She has become serious about having her own tiny kitchen garden. So I bought some cheap 14 cm wide and 15 mm thick pinewood. I cut the wood at the desired length and connected it with 4 x […]

Experiment 17: Set Tour Tone revisited

While working on the Atari Punk Console I reread the part of chaining chips in Experiment 17 of Make:Electronics (pg167). I then realized that I didn’t do all the experiments that are described in the book. Since Experiment 17 contains a lot of information and chaining 555 chips is common practice in electronics I decided […]

Atari Punk Console part 2: the perf board

Yesterday I soldered the Atari Punk Console that I had built on a breadboard previously onto perf board. I used the Adafruit Perma-Proto (half-size) which is very convenient because of the breadboard lay-out of this perf. Then I made a classic mistake. Having little time I tried to solder the components onto the board as […]

Atari Punk Console part 1: the breadboard

Before entering experiment 19 of Make: Electronics and the ‘realm of pure digital electronics’ I decided to do an analog project first. I want to make a Stepped Tone Generator aka Atari Punk Console. This piece of electronic is a very basic synthesizer, probably the simplest that one can create. The circuit was first published […]

Experiment 18: Reaction timer part 5 (finished)

I (almost) finished the reaction timer today. That means that the delay is build in. This was done by adding yet another 555 timer now in monostable mode. It is triggered with a tactile switch connected to pin 2 of the timer (see pg. 178 of Make:Electronics). During testing of the circuit the LED switched […]

Experiment 18: Reaction timer part 4

Previously I added 555 timer in astable mode to generate pulses for the counter chips. In the next step a second 555 chip is added. This timer runs in bistable mode (see pg. 176 of Make:Electronics). The purpose of this timer is to freeze the counting when the tactile switch is pressed (figure 4-40 of […]

Experiment 18: Reaction timer part 3

The next step in Experiment 18 of Make:Electronics is the addition of a 555 timer in astable mode to the circuit (pg. 175 of the book). This addition drives the decade counter therefore the tactile switch that was connected to pin 1 of the first decade counter from the previous part of the experiment had […]

Experiment 18: Reaction timer part 2

Last Friday I’ve built the circuit as displayed in figure 4-37 (pg. 174) of the book Make:Electronics. The circuit consists of (in my case) three Kingbright 7 segmented digits. Each digit was connected to a 4026 decade counter. The decade counters are coupled by connecting the output of pin 5 (carry) to the clock input […]