555

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8-bit counter made from 555s

555 Timer Contest Entry: A Digital Counter With Nothing But 555s

January 6, 2022 by 11 Comments

With a 555 on the BOM, you never know what you’re going to get. With 40 of the versatile timer chips in a build, you might just get something completely unexpected, like this 555-based eight-bit digital counter.

This one comes to us by way of [Astronomermike], who chose to make a digital circuit with nothing but 555s and a largish handful of passives as his entry in the current 555 Timer Contest. The ubiquitous timer chip is not exactly the first chip that comes to mind for digital applications, but it does contain an SR latch, which only requires a little persuasion to become a JK flip flop. His initial design for the flip flop that would form the core of the circuit had a pair of 555s surrounded with a bunch of OR gates and inverters — within the rules of the contest but hardly in its spirit. Luckily, the 555 makes a fine inverter too, and along with some diode-resistor OR gates, the basic counter module was born.

The video below shows the design and build, as well as the trip down the troubleshooting rabbit hole courtesy of a bad breadboard. Each half-nibble stage of the 8-bit counter occupies a full breadboard with ten 555s; the whole 40-chip string actually works and looks pretty cool doing it.

Truth be told, this is exactly the kind of thing we had in mind when dreaming up this year’s 555 contest, so good on [Astronomermike] for thinking outside the box for this one. To see what other uses people have found for the chip that keeps on giving, or to get your entry in before the deadline on January 10, head over to the contest page.

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A NeoPixel Punk Console

NeoPixel Punk Console Drives WS2812s Using 555 Timers

January 1, 2022 by 2 Comments

NeoPixels, a type of LED strip with individually addressable pixels, are a firm favorite among creators of intricate light effects. They are popular for their versatility and the ease with which you can daisy-chain them. Although the protocol to drive these little LEDs can be rather tricky to implement due to tight signal timing constraints.

However, [Adrian Studer] proved that driving WS2812-based LED strips like the NeoPixel series doesn’t necessarily require hand-optimized assembly code. In fact, it doesn’t require any code at all. He built the NeoPixel Punk Console, a device that creates a light show without even using a microcontroller. Just a handful of 555 timers and some 74HC series logic work together to produce pulses with approximately correct timings.

Operating the device is as easy as tweaking a few potentiometers, just like its namesake the Atari Punk Console. It’s quite a random process though, and it might be impossible to re-create a pattern that you liked. Also, the LEDs mostly light up in primary colors at full power, though [Adrian] plans to make an improved version that drives the red, green, and blue subpixels separately. But the fact that all of this is implemented by just a bunch of 555 timers makes it a rather impressive hack by any standard.

We’ve seen more than a few ways of driving NeoPixels or similar WS2812-based LED strips, though all of them use a microprocessor of some sort; you can fire up a classic 6502, use SPI and DMA on a PIC32, or just plug in a single ARM Cortex M0+.

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Acordeonador, an 555 accordion powered by a CD player based genrator

CD Player Powered 555 Piano Goes Accordion To Plan

December 30, 2021 by 8 Comments

Ah yes, the 555 piano project. Be it the Atari Punk Console, or some other 555 based synthesizer, Hackers just love to hear what the 555 can do when attached to a few passives and a speaker. It’s a sound to behold. But for [Berna], that wasn’t quite enough! Below the break, you can see his creation, called the Acordeonador.

A portmanteau of the Spanish words for “Accordion” and Generator”, the Acordeonador does what no project we’ve seen so far can do: It turns a CD drive into a generator for a 555 based synthesizer.

To give the Acordeonador a more analog feeling, a large 4700uf electrolytic capacitor stores just enough energy to make the music generation more than an on/off affair. It’s a great effect, and it works well! Not being one to leave any details out, [Berna] prototyped the build on perf board and then covered the board in what appears to be an wood grained contact paper, giving it that 1970’s dual keyboard electric organ feel.

It really just goes to prove that a 555 project can be the source of a great time! Hackaday is rife with 555 projects, but if you enjoy this, be sure to check out The Most Important Device In the Universe, which is of course powered by a 555. Continue reading “CD Player Powered 555 Piano Goes Accordion To Plan” →

All Hail Your New Giant 555 Timer Overlord

December 20, 2021 by 46 Comments

You asked for it, and now you’ve got it. It’s taken more than a decade of accumulated complaining, but this gigantic 555 timer IC has finally gathered enough psychokinetic energy to take corporeal form and demand fealty from the readers of Hackaday.

Or not. The less exciting explanation is that creator [Rudraksha Vegad] was looking for a way to combine his interests in discrete electronic components and woodworking. The result is an incredible build that’s more than just a conversation starter; this desktop-sized version of the iconic integrated timer circuit is fully functional. You can even hook it up to a breadboard, assuming you’ve got some alligator clips handy.

Lifting the lid on this wooden “chip” uncovers an intricate hand-wired array of discrete components that stand in for the microscopic goings on inside the real thing. He’s even gone through the trouble of recreating the symbols for the comparators and flip-flops that you’d see in a diagram of a 555 using wooden shapes to elevate their respective components. It might not fit the classical definition, but surely this must count as some form of circuit sculpture.

[Rudraksha] credits several other projects for not just inspiring him to create his own mega 555, but for helping him wrap his head around the internal workings of everyone’s favorite IC. Using components he salvaged from old hardware, he says the project ended up being very educational for him. These days, when most makers are more likely to reach for a microcontroller than a logic chip, spending some quality time with transistors and passives can be quite illuminating.

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You Can Always Use An ATtiny Instead Of A 555

December 15, 2021 by 62 Comments

It’s a constant of writing for Hackaday, that whenever a project appears using a 555 timer, someone will say “You could have used a microcontroller to do that!”. It’s something that [Shranav Palakurthi] has approached with the ATTiny555, a project that emulates an entire 555 by making clever use of the humble and ubiquitous microcontroller chip. We’ve all been guilty of it at some time, but now at last the ATTiny85 enthusiasts have conclusive proof that their favourite piece of cheap silicon can prove its mettle.

The full details of the ingenious 555 replacement can be found in its GitHub repository, and for those willing to take the plunge it’s as simple as adding a resistor and updating the firmware. It’s not the perfect 555 replacement with its imperfect analogue performance and swapped reset and ground pins, but it does however bring the advantage of a lower supply voltage.

You can see the device in action in the YouTube video below the break, but meanwhile rejoice that finally there’s a way to replace all those unnecessary 555s with your favourite inexpensive 8-pin chip!

While we’re on the subject of the 555, don’t forget we’re running our 555 contest again.

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Close up shot of a mechanical sequencer for 555 based synthesizers

Kinetic Synth-Kebab Sculpture Plays Punk Sequentially

October 4, 2021 by 12 Comments

What’s better than an Atari Punk Console synthesizer? How about four Atari Punk Console synthesizers. And what better way to present them but as brass wire art sculptures. We’d have forgiven [iSax] if he’d stopped at four brass wire synths, but he took things to another level with his kinetic sculpture that does double duty as a mechanical sequencer. Called the Cyclotone – The Mechanical Punk Console Sequencer, it features wood, brass, brushes, and 555 timers. You can see the demonstration in the video below the break.

If you’re not familiar with the Atari Punk Console, it’s a circuit first described as a “Sound Synthesizer” in Forest Mims’ “Engineer’s Notebook: Integrated Circuit Applications” first published in 1980. It utilized two 555 timers in a single chip, the 556. Later dubbed the “Atari Punk Console”, the circuit has stood the test of time and is still quite popular among hackers of all sorts.

[iSax]’s build adds a sequencing element that allows the synths to be played automatically. The synthesizers are skewered 90 degrees from each other on a square dowel, which is turned at a variable RPM by a stepper motor controlled by a knob at the base of the sculpture.

On either side of each synth is a commutator that contacts salvaged rotary tool brushes which provide power through the hexagonal brass supports. Each synth retains its own speaker and controls and has its own segmented numeral displayed with discrete LED’s that light up when each synth is played.

We applaud [iSax] for a well executed and imaginative build that successfully meshes circuit scultpure, kinetic sculpture, classic electronics and even blinkenlights. If you enjoyed this build, you should also go have a look at a free form Atari Punk Console build and another one built into a joystick. If you come across a project of any kind that catches your fancy, be sure you let us know about it via the Tip Line!

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