{"id":521,"date":"2023-10-13T19:54:39","date_gmt":"2023-10-13T18:54:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/robert.vanyi.org\/en\/?p=521"},"modified":"2024-05-09T11:44:16","modified_gmt":"2024-05-09T10:44:16","slug":"first-steps-with-the-breadboard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robert.vanyi.org\/en\/archives\/521","title":{"rendered":"First steps with the breadboard"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The packages that I ordered arrived fairly quickly. First the breadboards from the Netherlands then the components from Germany. As Ben recommended the BusBoard<\/a> BB830, this is what I have ordered, 3 of them and an additional BB830-KIT<\/a>. It comes with an additional battery box, jumper wires and an LED plus resistor for a simple test. I find the battery box quite useful, because it is mobile so you can take your assembled circuit for example to show off in front of your family or colleagues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Breadboard test<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

With my son we decided to start with the clock module first and to build an astable timer based on the 555 chip following the video from Ben Eater: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kRlSFm519Bo<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ben was using the Texas Instruments LM555 timer, but as it was out of stock, I have ordered the TLC555<\/a>, which should work in the same way and to my understanding it might even have a better performance. Just to understand the price range, we are talking about a 0.96\u20ac component.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another difference is that we used a 1 M\u03a9 resistor and not a 100 k\u03a9, because that’s what I have ordered, but that was not a problem, it just meant that the blinking was slower. Anyway the idea was to replace it with a potentiometer so that we can change the resistance up to 2 M\u03a9. Also we realized that the white stripe on the capacitor marks the negative contact, not the positive as in the video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Assembling the 555 circuit<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So we put together the circuit as shown in the video, turned it on, aaaand…. it almost worked. The LED turned on, and then after a while it turned off and remained so. But a quick check on the data sheet revealed the problem: the pin 4, which Ben has not connected (at least not in the first 20 minutes) is the reset pin. It is active low, so we connected it to +5V to avoid the 555 resetting, and voil\u00e1, the circuit was working as expected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What we did not do is the check with the oscilloscope, because I don’t have one, but maybe if I’m becoming more experienced and turning into a hobby HW engineer, I might get one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The packages that I ordered arrived fairly quickly. First the breadboards from the Netherlands then the components from Germany. As Ben recommended the BusBoard BB830, this is what I have ordered, 3 of them and an additional BB830-KIT. It comes with an additional battery box, jumper wires and an LED plus resistor for a simple … Continue reading First steps with the breadboard<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[74,72],"class_list":["post-521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-electronics","tag-breadboard","tag-electronics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robert.vanyi.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robert.vanyi.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robert.vanyi.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robert.vanyi.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robert.vanyi.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/robert.vanyi.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robert.vanyi.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robert.vanyi.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robert.vanyi.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}