The 555 was great. These days I usually just drop in a 6 pin microcontroller though. Less external parts, cheaper, less environmental instability, much more operational flexibility, and often I can have it perform several circuit functions. If I go to 8 pins, woah, look out! I do so much digitally now that I've "forgotten" 75 percent of my analog stuff... Once in a while I come upon a cool analog trick though. Sad pa…
Is this for a production device or like a hobby type thing? Reason I ask is that I'm often resistant to adding auxiliary microcontrollers to things just due to the extra hassle of maintaining, building, and distributing the firmware for them. Like, even if it's a device with JTAG, that's still a program-once-in-the-factory affair, unless you go the trouble of also setting up an SPI bootloader or something on it. I gu…
Re: The 555 and How It Got That Way
#51With analog solutions, the complexity gets pushed into designing the test rigs, validating your component supply, thermal compensation, etc. Dealing with firmware instead may or may not be a net win, but the bottom line is you can change the firmware but you can't change the board.