The schfive-five-five is schfifty-five! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-XccUMOQ978
(I just made half y'all crash out with old internet nostalgia. The rest of you are like "huh?")
EEVblog: The 555 Timer is 55 years old [video]
71–80 of 97 posts
Re: EEVblog: The 555 Timer is 55 years old [video]
#72The 555 timer is still the most popular chip that hobbyists add to their parts inventory (see rankings at https://partsbox.com/ecdb.html ). I find this both interesting and curious — I'd say it has mostly nostalgic value at this point. Almost every practical problem today is better solved by something else. And yet it persists, I guess mostly because of beginner tutorials and first LED blinky circuits. One nice thing…
> Almost every practical problem today is better solved by something else. I'm curious about this claim. It's certainly easier to just wire up a modern microcontroller, but is there a better option that involves no software and is likely to still work the same today as it did 50 years ago?
While it incurs a programming issue, the microcontroller will generally be more stable, less temperature sensitive, and consume less power.
Re: EEVblog: The 555 Timer is 55 years old [video]
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Almost every practical problem today is better solved by something else. I'm curious about this claim. It's certainly easier to just wire up a modern microcontroller, but is there a better option that involves no software and is likely to still work the same today as it did 50 years ago?
I find it much easier to write a ten line program for an 8 pin CH32V003 (or ATTiny85 in past times) to do exactly the timing or SDC comparisons I want than to figure out the circuit and component values for a 555 or op-amp. For that matter, a 16 pin CH32V003 can emulate a vast array of 7400 series devices as long as you don't need ns timing — no problem for µs. It's also cheaper.
Using a cpu running software to emulate a handful of gates is just the furthest thing from interesting. It's the inverse of elegant.
Re: EEVblog: The 555 Timer is 55 years old [video]
#74The 555 timer is still the most popular chip that hobbyists add to their parts inventory (see rankings at https://partsbox.com/ecdb.html ). I find this both interesting and curious — I'd say it has mostly nostalgic value at this point. Almost every practical problem today is better solved by something else. And yet it persists, I guess mostly because of beginner tutorials and first LED blinky circuits. One nice thing…
> Almost every practical problem today is better solved by something else. I'm curious about this claim. It's certainly easier to just wire up a modern microcontroller, but is there a better option that involves no software and is likely to still work the same today as it did 50 years ago?
For other posters saying 'just wire up a microcontroller': please self-reflect on your disregard for the concepts of simplicity & elegance. Never mind robustness, or educational aspects.
'Grab laptop, fire up IDE & plug in programmer cable' vs. 'configure the circuit using a soldering iron'. Both have their place.
Re: EEVblog: The 555 Timer is 55 years old [video]
#75A couple of years ago I used a 555 in an attempt to fix a problem I had with my Xiegu G90 ham radio. When sending CW (morse code), the radio would sometimes not see a "dit" (the short tone in morse code). I could reproduce it by tapping the paddle too quickly. My theory is that the G90 doesn't use interrupts to detect paddle presses, but rather polls those lines, and sometimes misses when a pulse happens completely in between polls. I made a little circuit using a 555, where the dit side triggers the 555 and closes the dit line just long enough to always be picked up by the G90, but short enough to never cause two dits (at least not at the speed I was going at). I didn't bother doing the same for the dah side, because apparently my index finger is slower than my thumb and the problem never came up there. It worked flawlessly, but only when not transmitting. As soon as RF got involved, it behaved weirdly. I tried adding ferrite beads, but it didn't solve it. In the end I never used it, and just learned to not slap the dits so fast, but it was a fun experience and see the 555 work.
More details: https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/comments/1eo9ki7/xiegy...
Re: EEVblog: The 555 Timer is 55 years old [video]
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trivial with a 10c microcontroller ...
"Trivial" But then you realize you forgot to account for a 32 bit counter wrapping up. Or potential failures in the power supply or other capacitors
somewhere else they were discussing how to use a 555 to time 55 years, and how for such a long period you'd need impractical resistance and capacitance values.
easy workaround would be to set a more reasonable period, say, 1 sec, and use a counter to know when you hit 55 years.
coincidentally, 55 years is 2 ** 30.7 seconds, so it'd just fit in a 32 bit register.
though i take you were thinking about counting clock cycles or something in which case surely your register would overflow
Re: EEVblog: The 555 Timer is 55 years old [video]
#775:55 video released on May 5th, as per description :) For something feeling like a fairly specific IC, I remember seeing many projects that use it throughout the years in wacky ways - and seeing it makes me happy to know that the sentiment for this little piece is shared.
The trick is that it's sold as a timer but it's really a kit of parts from which you happen to be able to build a timer. There's a lesson in there somewhere.
When I was designing hardware we used the 555 almost exclusively to build one-shots.
Re: EEVblog: The 555 Timer is 55 years old [video]
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find it much easier to write a ten line program for an 8 pin CH32V003 (or ATTiny85 in past times) to do exactly the timing or SDC comparisons I want than to figure out the circuit and component values for a 555 or op-amp. For that matter, a 16 pin CH32V003 can emulate a vast array of 7400 series devices as long as you don't need ns timing — no problem for µs. It's also cheaper.
Using a cpu running software to emulate a handful of gates is just the furthest thing from interesting. It's the inverse of elegant.
Until you go to lay out your circuit board. There's a reason microcontrollers are used for tasks like debouncing switches.
Re: EEVblog: The 555 Timer is 55 years old [video]
#79The 555 timer is still the most popular chip that hobbyists add to their parts inventory (see rankings at https://partsbox.com/ecdb.html ). I find this both interesting and curious — I'd say it has mostly nostalgic value at this point. Almost every practical problem today is better solved by something else. And yet it persists, I guess mostly because of beginner tutorials and first LED blinky circuits. One nice thing…
> Almost every practical problem today is better solved by something else. I'm curious about this claim. It's certainly easier to just wire up a modern microcontroller, but is there a better option that involves no software and is likely to still work the same today as it did 50 years ago?
Why is no software so important? If you design your board well enough, you can route the programming ports somewhere you can program it in-situ, possible with other components that also need programming.
But in terms of cost, a simple microcontroller is usually cheaper than a 555 nowadays, often doesn't require external components, and so even if all you wanted was a single function like an edge-triggered pulse, or generate a single frequency, it probably still makes sense to use a microcontroller from a board design perspective. As soon as you want anything slightly more complicated, odds are you can replace a ton of other circuitry on the board with that single chip and a small program.
Re: EEVblog: The 555 Timer is 55 years old [video]
#80Built an atari punk console using these with my late father. Still have it hanging on my wall in a shadow box.
I recently dug one out to use as a hardware shutdown timer to power off an rpi's PSU once it has presumably halted without having to resort to a dedicated MCU for the task.
My favorite 555 use was as a one-shot to power off a NIC after using its wake-on-LAN signal to reset a hung motherboard:
https://www.i3detroit.org/reset-on-lan-an-ethernet-aware-rem...