You’ve found a cool 555 timer project online or in my book, procured all of the parts, wired them up on a breadboard, and are now ready to power up your newly made creation. Time for the moment of glory. You slide the power switch on and… nothing, it’s not working how you expected, or worst case scenario – the magic smoke escapes one of your parts.

It’s happened to the best of us and will continue to do so. These have been my four most common 555 timer circuit mistakes, and are common in most other breadboard projects.

Wiring/Placement Mistake

I would say this is the most common cause for error that I have experienced, especially with breadboard circuits. All it takes is for one wire or part to be off by one hole on the breadboard, or you have a particular component flipped around backward, and your circuit will probably be rendered inoperable.

Solution: Double, even triple-check your wiring. Ensure all chips and polarized components are placed in the correct orientation. Methodically follow the current flow of the schematic in comparison to your breadboard circuit.

Wrong Component

Almost a tie for the most common problem I’ve experienced is using the wrong component. An incorrect value of a resistor, capacitor, etc., is easy to do with small, sometimes cryptic labels on parts.

Solution: Similar to the wiring mistakes, carefully check each component label to make sure it’s the correct value.

Low Battery Voltage

Your circuit works perfectly once, but not the second time you test it, even without changing anything. The timing is off, LEDs are barely lighting, what the heck is going on? After checking many iterations of a circuit or leaving it on for a while, that 9-volt battery may only be at 7 volts, and things may start to get a bit wonky. The 555 is fairly immune to supply voltage differences. However, when a battery nears the lower end of its capacity, the increase in internal resistance of the dying battery reduces the available current to the point of rendering your circuit or device useless.

Solution: If you notice any of the issues mentioned above, fire up your trusty multimeter and make sure the battery voltage for your circuit is at an acceptable level.

Capacitor Leakage

After thoroughly troubleshooting every tip mentioned above, the timing cycle of your project “hangs.” An LED should turn on and then off in monostable mode but instead stays on, or your astable mode circuit doesn’t oscillate from one state to the next, etc.

If your circuit uses a large value timing capacitor (usually for longer timing periods), the culprit of the behavior described above could be a leaky capacitor. What is capacitor leakage? When basic electronics are taught using the water (hydraulics) analogy method, a capacitor is usually represented by a pipe with a perfectly sealed flexible rubber diaphragm in the middle that prevents water from passing through.

To use that analogy to describe capacitor leakage, the diaphragm isn’t perfectly sealed, and a small amount of water (current) does leak through. Large electrolytic capacitors are known for having a higher leakage current than most other types. This can cause issues for time-sensitive circuits.

Another way to visualize leakage current is in the diagram to the right. Imagine a resistor in parallel with the capacitor allowing a small amount of current to pass.

I have had a brand new 50-volt, 1 uF electrolytic capacitor by one manufacturer only charge up to 2 volts when 9 volts were applied due to high leakage current. All of my other caps by different manufacturers with the same ratings worked fine. It took me a while to figure out what was going on.

Solution: For more critical timing applications tantalum or Mylar and other film type caps usually work best. If you have to use electrolytic caps, at least use low tolerance, high-quality ones. You can usually find the leakage current specs on the manufacturer’s data sheet.

Wrapping Up

These are the most common errors I’ve run into while working with breadboard circuits. How about you? What have been your biggest 555 timer circuit mistakes? Give everyone a heads up of what to look out for in the comments below!

The post Four Biggest 555 Timer Circuit Mistakes appeared first on Bent-Tronics.

In this video, I show what the completed projects from Chapter 7 should look like.

Buy the book here.
Buy the complete parts kit here.

The post My 555 Book, Chpt. 8 recap: Bonus Mode appeared first on Bent-Tronics.

In this video, I show what the completed projects from Chapter 7 should look like.

Errata:
Project 5 parts list – Optional caps C4 and C5 are shown in the schematic and breadboard layouts, but not listed in the parts list. Both should be .01 uF

The post My 555 Book, Chpt. 7 recap: Audible Anarchy with the Atari Punk Console appeared first on Bent-Tronics.

In this video, I show what the completed projects from Chapter 6 should look like.

Buy the book here.
Buy the complete parts kit here.

The post My 555 Book, Chpt. 6 recap: More Mode Mixing appeared first on Bent-Tronics.

In this video, I show what the completed projects from Chapter 5 should look like.

Buy the book here.
Buy the complete parts kit here.

The post My 555 Book, Chpt. 5 recap: Mixing Modes appeared first on Bent-Tronics.

In this video, I show what the completed projects from Chapter 4 should look like.

Buy the book here.
Buy the complete parts kit here.

The post My 555 Book, Chpt. 4 recap: Basic Monostable Mode appeared first on Bent-Tronics.

In this video, I show what the completed projects from Chapter 3 should look and sound like.

Buy the book here.
Buy the complete parts kit here.

The post My 555 Book, Chpt. 3 recap: Basic Astable Mode appeared first on Bent-Tronics.

Things have been a little quiet on the blog, but behind the scenes, I’ve been a writing/editing/formatting/coding/building/designing/marketing/coffee-drinking machine! Two years ago I had an idea to write an e-book about the 555 timer. That has now manifested itself into a full-blown print book, Kindle book, and a complete parts kit for the projects listed inside.

The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to the 555 Timer: Build the Atari Punk Console and Other Breadboard Electronics Projects. Yes, it’s a mouthful, but it gets the entire scope of the book across in the title.

The book is available on Amazon here.

I also collaborated with Jameco to assemble a full parts kit with all of the components required to complete the projects listed in the book. The parts kit is available from Jameco here.

The official homepage for the book, which will include videos of each chapter and project in the book, plus much more, is here: bent-tronics.com/555-timer-circuit-book

Check out this video of me opening up the book and kit for the first time and a quick overview of each.

Here’s the Amazon blurb:
Unlock weird noises, hypnotic lights, and master the 555 timer.
Buy the print version of this book first to get the Kindle version for just $0.99! (not available in all countries)
This fast-paced, easy-to-follow book teaches you how the 555 timer works with step-by-step instructions and hands-on projects. Whether you are an electronics enthusiast or a beginner, this DIY guide shares simple tricks and hacks to put the 555 timer into action. FULL-COLOR illustrations show you how to transform circuit schematics into real-world working examples on a standard breadboard – no soldering required! High-resolution oscilloscope screenshots reveal detailed views of complex waveforms not able to be seen with the human eye. Advance your skills by completing the included projects so that you can create your own unique designs. A complete parts kit is available too!
You will learn how to:

• Use a breadboard
• Utilize the 555’s pins
• Trigger “one-shot” mode
• Blink an LED
• Generate noises with an oscillator
• Create a frequency divider
• Make a bistable flip-flop
• Source and sink current
• Build and understand the Atari Punk Console

The post My new book: The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to the 555 Timer appeared first on Bent-Tronics.

Arcano Systems is no stranger to the Kickstarter game, with three out of four funded campaigns under their belt. Their newest project, the Arcano MIDI NES Chiptune Synth II, hit its goal in less than 48 hours and still has 19 more days to go.

This second version’s hardware and software includes improvements such as:

• more polyphony
• more waveforms
• more patches
• greater bass range
• improved volume envelope system for reduced latency
• linearized vibrato depth
• improved Mega-Man-II-style two-channel echo patches
• USB power
• lower parts count
• filtered audio output (low-pass filter with fixed cutoff frequency)
• better audio signal DC-bias removal

The post Introducing a new and improved 8bit MIDI NES Chiptune Synth appeared first on Bent-Tronics.

Today I went to visit a website I’d relied on as a staple source of electronic kits, only to be greeted by a static page that read, in part:

For more than 4 decades, the name Ramsey Kits has been synonymous with some of the neatest and the greatest electronic products and hobby kits for the do-it-yourself hobbyist.  In those 40+ years, we always thought “outside the box” when we designed a new kit, making us known worldwide as the number one hobby kit manufacturer.

…Therefore, following our well respected predecessors like Heathkit, KnightKit, Eico, and others in the past, we are discontinuing our Hobby Kit Group January 1, 2016.

This is a summary of the full statement that can be found on their main page, here. Besides the front page, I couldn’t find any other news about it on the tubes.

For now, there’s some inventory left selling on Amazon here.

In case you hadn’t heard of Ramsey Electronics and their kits, you can browse a snapshot of their site from Nov. 30, 2015, via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine here. Ramsey had over 400 kits for everything from Amateur Radio gear, Nixie tube clocks, PIC programmers, etc. Even very esoteric kits like one for controlling airport runway lights (which I almost bought for the hangar at the news helicopter I used to work in).

One of my very first electronics kits (circa the early 2000s) was from Ramsey – an active RF antenna, seen here:

The hobby electronics & kit industry has been a tough market for a while. However, some newer companies like SparkFun, Adafruit, etc., seem to have figured out a couple things that maybe Ramsey, Radio Shack, and some others may have not. In my opinion, these may be a few:

• Open Source – Many of the kit companies were just using designs from magazines, books, and other prior art sources, but in a closed source fashion. Even if the kits were designed in-house, most of the time schematics weren’t available unless you purchased the kit. For the companies that did make schematics or instructions available for download, the explanation of the circuits was usually still too technical. Which leads me to my next point.
• Documentation/Instructions – Many of the kits I’ve assembled, while having an explanation of the circuit, were too technical. My outlook was, if someone is assembling a kit, they probably don’t have any or much electronics background and need a very basic (layman) explanation of the circuit. Even better if there’s…
• Video – A video of the final kit, or maybe even an assembly video to show any “gotchas” is invaluable, in my opinion. Even if it’s just to show how the kit works vs. just reading the description on a product page.
• Social Media – Like it or not, social media is pretty much required for business anymore. A lot of the kit & hobby electronics companies that have gone by the wayside either didn’t have any social media presence or just never figured out how to utilize them.
• Community – All of the above four points lead to a community. Just like many of the defunct companies failed to have any or the right combinations of the aforementioned points, it leads to them not having a community. Just the old Seller/Buyer or Seller/Shareholder/Buyer relationship.

The post Ramsey Electronics shuts down it’s hobby kits division appeared first on Bent-Tronics.