18 Apr
2012
18 Apr
'12
4:23 p.m.
On 18/04/2012 22:56, William Donzelli wrote:
> While the 555
> has been around a long time and has it's own "hacker" tradition built
> around it, for whatever reason it isn't visible in the current
> hobbyist community.
Its odd really. As some of you may have notice I am a
Radio, and so chat
to other hams locally on a daily basis. Any way a fellow ham (and
friend) was discussing building a simple control panel with discrete
logic. I suggested he used an 8-pin PIC chip but he said no it was
simpler in real logic. I said I could already detect scope creep and a
PIC would give more room for this. Well after a week when the simple
chip count was up to 4 just to run the buttons, he reluctantly swapped
to a PIC chip. It was cheaper, and gave a lower component count. Sadly
as this was just a one-off it extended the project like cycle as writing
the code took a while.
The 555 is starting to be not very visible in
industry, either. There are
very few applications these days that are so simple - there always seems to
be some sort of microprocessor hanging around that can be in some ways
utilized - with the advantage of not needing the 555s resistors and
capacitors and all the issues they bring.
Not to mention the manufacturing spread
and slight differences between
different suppliers chips
--
Will
Dave
G4UMG