Make: Electronics by Charles Platt (read me a book .TXT) 📕

pins on either side, and read signals out of them. See Figure 4-14 for a precise guide to placement, in the first project. The timer is identified as “IC1,” because “IC” is the customary abbreviation for “Integrated Circuit.”

Figure 4-14. This circuit allows you to explore the behavior of the 555 timer chip. Use your meter to monitor the voltage on pin 2 as shown. There are no resistors labeled R1, R2, or R3 and no capacitors labeled C1 or C2, because they’ll be added in a later schematic. Component values in this schematic:

R4: 100K

R5: 2K2

R6: 10K

R7: 1K

R8: 5K linear potentiometer

C3: 100 µF electrolytic

C4: 47 µF electrolytic

C5: 0.1 µF ceramic

IC1: 555 timer

S1, S2: SPST tactile switches (pushbuttons)

D1: Generic LED

R5 holds the trigger (pin 2) positive until S1 is pressed, which lowers the voltage depending on the setting of potentiometer R8. When the trigger voltage falls below 1/3 of the power supply, the chip’s output (pin 3) goes high for a period determined by the values of R4 and C4. S2 resets (zeros) the timer, by reducing the voltage to pin 4, the Reset. C3 smoothes the power supply, and C5 isolates pin 5, the control, so that it won’t interfere with the functioning of this test circuit. (We’ll use the control pin in a future experiment.)

All integrated circuit chips require a power supply. The 555 is powered with negative voltage applied to pin 1 and positive to pin 8. If you reverse the voltage accidentally, this can permanently damage the chip, so place your jumper wires carefully.

Set your power supply to deliver 9 volts. It will be convenient for this experiment if you supply positive down the righthand side and negative down the lefthand side of the breadboard, as suggested in Figure 4-14. C3 is a large capacitor, at least 100 µF, which is placed across the power supply to smooth it out and provide a local store of charge to fuel fast-switching circuits, as well as to guard against other transient dips in voltage. Although the 555 isn’t especially fast-switching, other chips are, and you should get into the habit of protecting them.

Begin with the potentiometer turned all the way counterclockwise to maximize the resistance between the two terminals that we’re using, and when you apply the probe from your meter to pin 2, you should measure about 6 volts when you press S1.

Now rotate the potentiometer clockwise and press S1 again. If the LED doesn’t light up, keep turning the potentiometer and pressing and releasing the button. When you’ve turned the potentiometer about two-thirds of the way, you should see the LED light up for just over 5 seconds when you press and release the button. Here are some facts that you should check for yourself:

The LED will keep glowing after you release the button.

You can press the button for any length of time (less than the timer’s cycle time) and the LED always emits the same length of pulse.

The timer is triggered by a fall in voltage on pin 2. You can verify this with your meter.

The LED is either fully on or fully off. You can’t see a faint glow when it’s off, and the transition from off to on and on to off is very clean and precise.

Check Figure 4-16 to see how the components should look on your breadboard, and then look at the schematic in Figure 4-15 to understand what’s happening. I will be adding more components later, which I will be labeling R1, R2, C1, and C2 to be consistent with data sheets that you may see for the 555 timer. Therefore, in this initial circuit the resistors are labeled R4 and up, and capacitors C3 and up.

Figure 4-15. A schematic view of the circuit shown in Figure 4-14. Throughout this chapter, the schematics will be laid out to emulate the most likely placement of components on a breadboard. This is not always the simplest layout, but will be easiest for you to build. Refer to Figure 4-14 for the values of the components.

Figure 4-16. This is how the components look when installed on the breadboard. The alligator clips are attached to a patch cord that links the 100 µF capacitor to the potentiometer. The power supply input is not shown.

When S1 (the tactile switch) is open, pin 2 of the 555 timer receives positive power through R5, which is 2K2. Because the input resistance of the timer is very high, the voltage on pin 2 is almost the full 9 volts.

When you press the button, it connects negative voltage through R8, the 5K potentiometer to pin 2. Thus, R8 and R5 form a voltage divider with pin 2 in the middle. You may remember this concept from when you were testing transistors. The voltage between the resistances will change, depending on the values of the resistances.

If R8 is turned up about halfway, it is approximately equal to R5, so the midpoint, connected to pin 2, has about half the 9-volt power supply. But when you turn the potentiometer so that its resistance falls farther, the negative voltage outweighs the positive voltage, so the voltage on pin 2 gradually drops.

If you have clips on your meter leads, you can hook them onto the nearest jumper wires and then watch the meter while you turn the potentiometer up and down and press the button.

The graphs in Figure 4-17 illustrate what is happening. The upper graph shows the voltage applied to pin 2 by random button-presses, with the potentiometer turned to various values. The lower graph shows that the 555 is triggered if, and only if, the voltage on pin 2 actively drops from above 3 volts to below 3 volts. What’s so special about 3 volts? It’s one-third of our 9-volt power supply.

Here’s the take-home message:

The output of the 555 (pin 3)