alt Hacker NewsEEVblog: The 555 Timer is 55 years old [video]
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5:55 video released on May 5th, as per description :)
For something feeling like a fairly specific IC, I remember seeing many projects that use it throughout the years in wacky ways - and seeing it makes me happy to know that the sentiment for this little piece is shared.
Big Clive is currently livestreaming to celebrate the 555's birthday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzNjFJdaw_I
As a kid I didn’t understand what the 555 timer chip on the Apple II disk controller was doing but I learned the hard way that when you misalign the pins on the drive connector cable and the 555 chip releases its blue smoke you can’t use the drive anymore :(
I still have the Forrest Mims III Radio Shack "555 Engineer's Mini-Notebook" somewhere in my basement. And rumor has it that Sammy Hagar can't drive 555 because his car just isn't fast enough!
Evil Mad Scientist makes a giant, discrete version as a soldering kit:
https://shop.evilmadscientist.com/productsmenu/tinykitlist/6...
Very cool. (Looks like it uses 26 transistors. I assume the die is similar.)
Built an atari punk console using these with my late father. Still have it hanging on my wall in a shadow box.
Oh god I feel old. I remember being an excited schoolboy thinking how magic this was when it debuted.
The 555 timer is still the most popular chip that hobbyists add to their parts inventory (see rankings at https://partsbox.com/ecdb.html). I find this both interesting and curious — I'd say it has mostly nostalgic value at this point. Almost every practical problem today is better solved by something else. And yet it persists, I guess mostly because of beginner tutorials and first LED blinky circuits.
One nice thing about the 555 is that at least it aged well and still is very usable in those beginner tutorials. Unlike for example the uA741 which no one should use.
I used one of these to win an inter-school science competition when I was ~13. It was a minute timer. The competition board doubted I had built it all myself, so they plonked it down in front of me and demanded I draw the circuit diagram in front of them.
also today's date is 5.5. and the video is 5m55s
I have a Displate of a decapped 555 hanging near my EE workbench:
Back when radio shack still existed I would buy a 555 timer during every visit. I live collecting them and still have a bunch somewhere stored. I continue to do it with the 328p arduino boards as well whenever I visit my local microcenter.
As an electronics-enthusiast kid in the 70's, just before home computers showed up at all, I wished the 555 was for Time Travel
When I was a camp counselor in my 20s I designed a one-octave "piano" out of one of these, a battery, paperclips for keys, and a shitload of resistors. We had the kids build them on proto board. They sounded harsh but you could play Mary Had a Little Lamb on them!
!remindme 500 years
Can't watch it right now, but upvoted for Dave Jones. He's taught me so much. Absolute treasure, and the host of one of the last great active forums. Thank you for not blackholing all that info on the disaster that is Discord, like so many other communities.
What component values do you need to time exactly 55 years?
Maybe it could work if you used 5 timers?
Time to slow it down to lower frequencies and give it more frequent checkups.
Just another 500 years to go. I missed the beginning, probably will miss that last milestone as well.
The late Harold DuBose use to use the 555 as a power inverter as it could sink 200ma at the laser companies he worked for. Convenient and cheap.
killer oneshot, laughed hard..
I used to get exited about this. Hahaha I think I miss those days.
Makes me wonder if we could have a 555 circuit with a trigger time of 55 yrs
and this is the fifth comment
You can learn about the origin of the 555 timer from its creator in his free book here: http://www.designinganalogchips.com/
Fun fact: his original concept needed 9 pins and therefore was going be forced to have a 14 pin package. A late epiphany got it down to the 8 pin version we know today.