Re: 555; was: Re: Who is your favourite electronics guru?

mc wrote:
<bill.sloman@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:1155421641.296694.20070@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


Not exactly. The absence of any modern competitior for the 555's slot
has more to say about the absence of any serious application for the
555 in mass-produced devices than it has to say about the quality of
the original design.


Interesting thought. I use 555s a lot developing one-of-a-kind prototypes. But I'm inclined to agree that in a more complex, more systematically designed system, there probably aren't going to be many 555-shaped holes, so to speak. Switching and timing are done by the CPU if there is one. Oscillators can be cobbled together out of leftover gates. And so on.

In one of my current projects I am deliberating between a 555 and an 8-pin microcontroller. Given that we save a couple of diodes and capacitors, the micro may be cheaper! And it opens up the possibility of adding other intelligent behavior, response to additional sensors, soft start-up, status indicators, etc., all by just writing more code.

The appeal of the 555 is that I can give a hobbyist a circuit that can be built with Radio Shack parts, with no device programming.




The 555 always was and always will be a total piece of ***.

The baby PIC's blow it completely away on all counts.



--
Many thanks,

Don Lancaster voice phone: (928)428-4073
Synergetics 3860 West First Street Box 809 Thatcher, AZ 85552
rss: http://www.tinaja.com/whtnu.xml email: don@xxxxxxxxxx

Please visit my GURU's LAIR web site at http://www.tinaja.com
.

Quantcast