Yep, $3.60 for a 10-pack.

Why is the PWM visible in the lens flare?

That is really cool.

@Ben Ryves
Makes me think of the possibility of hacking one of those cameras to create a rudimentary oscilloscope, changing the scan rate to control the sample size. Of course, it would only work with leds, but I think it would still be cool.

555 ICs are among the most versatile chips ever designed. Here’s a very interesting interview with its creator. http://www.semiconductormuseum.com/Transistors/LectureHall/Camenzind/Camenzind_Index.htm

Anyway, a toggle button can be built with bare transistors, as some manufacturers did for guitar pedals, flip flops like the cheap 4013 that contains two units into its case so you can build a double switch circuit with it, or microcontrollers.
I would recommend to the beginners some good books about the 555 and the excellent “CMOS Cookbook” and “TTL Cookbook” by Don Lancaster. They’re fairly old but the principles didn’t change.

Why get a logic analyzer when you have a camera like this ;) Just kidding. That’s pretty cool, though.

I built one of these a while back for a dive camera housing based off of the 555 bistable circuit from here: http://www.kpsec.freeuk.com/555timer.htm#bistable

It works as a remote for a cannon SLR, one of the buttons toggles on the autofocus, the other button triggers the shutter and disables the autofocus.

Long live the 555 versatile and awsome chip!

Sorry to not note the sarcasm in the statement. A logic analyzer could measure pwm, but it would be a poor and very narrowly focused option, given a 5 volt signal and pwm slow enough for it to recognize, or for somebody to recognize it on a blinking LED. Though the optical analyzer idea is interesting and could work.

nice NotYou, guess I forgot to take into account the enhanced speed of logic analyzers now to the basic ones I’ve used. The optical analysis is still an interesting concept though too.

deathventure: Tektronix’s current top-end logic analyzer will handle signals up to 1.4GHz with a timing resolution of 20ps. Agilent probably has comparable equipment.

Even the venerable HP 1630 is good to 25MHz which ought to be enough for your average PWM…

555 timers are also good for Macgyver style coyote decoys: http://www.ubermodder.com/home-made-coyote-decoy/

dewd: the original problem was that only a momentary switch was available (implemented as a conductive patch on the hoodie’s zipper I think). Some something was needed to go from a momentary contact to an on/off toggle.

lol i just came across one of these bad boys earlier today digging through my ‘junk’ pile

This NE555 has a million and one usage :)

@nubie
@Ben Ryves
That’s not lens flare :)
His camera uses a CCD sensor (rather than CMOS). The CCD captures an entire frame at a time, but it does sort of a “bucket brigade” technique to read it out line by line — shifting the charge up a line each iteration.
Each pixel is basically an integrator for light. That characteristic vertical line is what happens when a few pixels in a column get “too much” charge, the charge gets “smeared” through the entire column as it’s read out. Hence the white line.
CMOS doesn’t suffer from this, as it uses a different technique for capturing the frame and reading it out.