Well, first of all, I am sorry about creating a new topic, but I was unable to find any other place where I could post this, even if I allowed myself some necroposting…
As some of you probably already know, one of my hobbies other than tool-assisted speedrunning is making hand-made electronic devices. So, this topic is going to be dedicated to such kind of hobby. I am not actually very skilled at it, but I have some basic knowledge about soldering, making PCBs, and so on. I built a lot of simple analog circuits, like luminiscent lamp driver (for powering it from a battery), a lot of audio amplifiers (transistor and IC powered), and some other stuff.
Ages ago (like in 1970s, for example) learning about electronic DIY usually started with building a
crystal radio. It is very simple, but it’s just perfect to give imagination about many complex things such as amplitude modulation, diodes and capacitors, and lots other things… But, obviously, nowadays it doesn’t make any sense in absolutely most places on Earth. So, what circuit to chose for building it first? I’d suggest a very basic circuit with a LED, battery, a button and a resistor. It’s a lot simplier than even such simple thing as crystal radio, but it’s still enough to get imagination about:
— electricity basics (polarity, for example)
— soldering (if used)
— Ohm’s law, the most basic law in electronics
Experimenting with such a basic circuit could include varying the resistor’s resistance, measuring the voltages on the battery and on the LED, measuring the current.
Why am I talking about it? Because I got friends who want to learn about electronics, and they have to start from scratch. My problem is that I have absolutely no idea what to recommend them — I am way too busy to teach them myself, and I do not know any good (proved to be good by time) information sources which could help beginners to learn the basics of electronics step by step. I’d be glad if you could suggest such a source (preferrably online).
And, of course, you are welcome to join the discussion.
It works just like a charm, but at first I could not make it working. I checked the plate many times, even replaced the NE555 IC, which I supposed to be broken — no result. The LED was constantly luminous without blinking. Suddenly, when looking for possible short circuit, I’ve realized that today I used a newly bought soldering flux… My guess was right: the source of the problem was the conductive flux. After washing it out and starting the device again, it worked.
Here is a generated picture of the PCB (view from SMD component side). I used a DIP LED (I don’t have SMD ones, yet) and two CR2025 batteries. Resistors and capacitors are 1206-sized.
Cannot provide a photo for now, because I broke my mobile phone. But I will post a photo (or video) next few days. I will also show some [a little more complex] DIP devices I’ve built.
Unfortunately, as you could have noticed, I have way more experience with analog circuits than digital ones… But I’m still learning, and often experiment with microcontrollers (AVR), standard logic ICs, NE555 timer and so on. So I think very soon I will be able to show some of my digital constructions. It’s not going to be a TAS player (sadly, I do not even have any working game console nowadays), but something a lot more simple :)
The IC is К176ИЕ12 = MM5368
So I’ve connected everything and connected my frequency meter to pin 14 of the IC. And — what the hell — it shows 33.3. I guess clock quartz is not meant to be that wrong? I tried three of them, and they all result in the same output frequency — 33.3 kHz. May the reason be the parasitic capacity of the breadboard itself? Or my frequency meter is lying me?..
(upd) I present a small challenge for the members who are not really familiar with the electronics, but still enjoy my topic. You have to answer a simple question.
I got a lot of light-emitting diodes. Some of them are red, some are yellow, some are green. There are also some, which are transparent, but all of them emit red, green, yellow, blue and orange colors. But I also got some black LEDs. Obviously, they do not emit black light (can you just imagine that?) — their actual color is infrared. Infrared (IR) light is completely invisible for the human eye.
So, the question is: how do you think, if I connect this LED to my blink device and record a video with my mobile phone:
1. Will the light be visible on the video?
2. If yes, then what color it will be?
I strongly advice the users who know the answer, not to post the answer here. Just wanna make a small challenge for everyone curious and then post the video answer :)
