I spent a bit too much time googling for synth music and sequencers over the last few days. I had a lot of fun just reading about folks projects and how they built up various kits or designed from scratch different arrangements. I have not really spent much time working with 4000 series or 7400 series ICs in the last ten years. Well not since first year Uni to be honest. That was a long time ago and my memory for truth tables is long forgotten.
So, I almost cheated but finding the friendliest schematic I could find and trying to build that up. You know how it goes, adapting part of this circuit as a stage one of your project. Well I had a few problems. My 4017 wasn't behaving at all! I spent several hours on the bench trying to figure out why I couldn't get the thing to behave. The first problem was that I missed a ground connection on pin 12, eventually running a bypass cap to the reset pin before it settled down and started to do the right thing. But the first LED wasn't behaving itself at all ...
Some further testing revealed that the LED in the first position was a flashing LED! So its now in its own draw, in the component cabinet. The 555 was a whole lot easier to work with and was pretty much doing what it was supposed to from assembly. The potentiometer has a dead spot right at the fast end of oscillator, so may need to swap the wires on the pads, or get a new 1megaohm 'pot'.
I will say that after having the 'friendly' schematic, I did change most the resistor values, add a few extra capacitors and lay it up differently on the plug-in breadboard. Its not a new circuit, but I learned a lot, mainly how to trouble shoot this little thing.
So what have I achieved here? More motivation to tinker in the shed/shack on the plug-in breadboard and play around with the circuit. Getting things working build up the motivation to do more. I have a tall ladder before me. I'm aiming to make the rungs nice a close together. Easier to climb that way ;)
Anyhow, happy homebrewing to all!
72,
Kim - VK5FNET
No comments:
Post a Comment