Flashy Paper Christmas Tree Does It With A 555

‘Tis the season for holiday hacks, and [Ben Emmett] is here to remind us that we don’t necessarily need a fancy microcontroller in order to make flashy fun things happen. Take this Chri…

Using The 555 For Everything

The 555 timer is one of the most versatile integrated circuits available. It can generate PWM signals, tones, and single-shot pulses. You can even put one in a bi-stable mode similar to a flip flop…

Building An Automotive Load Dump Tester

For those who have not dealt with the automotive side of electronics before, it comes as somewhat of a shock when you find out just how much extra you have to think about and how tough the testing …

Bringing The 555 Mini-Notebook To Video

Like many of us [AnotherMaker] is a fan of the classic Forrest Mims electronics books, specifically, the Engineer’s Mini-Notebook series. They were great sources of inspiration, but at the ti…

See Them Knocking With A Doorbell Alert

Picture it: you’re on the treadmill, running through a forest, sweating like a pig, and the doorbell rings because a package is being delivered. Would you even hear it? Chances are, if you&#8…

Homebrew Computer From The Ground Up

Building a retro computer of some sort is a rite of passage for many of us, with some building replicas or restorations of old Commodores, Ataris, and other machines from decades past. Others go ev…

Test Your Capacity For Circuit Sculpture With Flashing Lights

Have you tried your hand at circuit sculpture yet? Well, if you were waiting for the ideal first project with a great build video to go along with it, keep reading. [4dcircuitry]’s 555-based …

NE555-Based Electronic Dice

It has become a bit of a running joke in the Hackaday community to suggest that a project could or should have been done with a 555 timer. [Tim] has rather taken this to heart with his latest Elect…

Surface Mount Soldering Practice For Budding Electrical Engineers

Electronics components are steadily moving away from through hole parts to using surface mount technology (SMT) exclusively. While the small size of the SMT components can be intimidating, with a l…

Big Noise From A 555 And A Little Embroidery

[Sam Topley] specializes in making textile based, electronic instruments and sculptures using embroidery, and this little hoop packs some serious sound (Nitter). The circuit is a riff on a classic …

Spaceship Repair CTF Covers Hardware Hacker Essentials

At even vaguely infosec-related conferences, CTFs are a staple. For KernelCon 2021, [Tyler Rosonke] resolved to create a challenge breaking the traditions, entertaining and teaching people in a dif…

555 Teardown Isn’t Just A Good Time, It’s To Die For

It seems only appropriate that hot on the heels of the conclusion of Hackaday’s 555 Timer Contest that [Ken Shirriff] posts a silicon die teardown of an early version of a hacker’s favo…

Congratulations Winners Of The 555 Timer Contest!

Sometimes the best inspiration is limitation. The 555 timer does “one thing” — compares a voltage to a couple thresholds and outputs a signal accordingly. It’s two comparato…

Honda Ignition Coils Sing The Song Of Their People

High-voltage experimenters have been using automotive ignition coils to generate impressive sparks in the home lab for decades, and why not? They’re cheap, easily obtainable, and at the end o…

Custom Christmas Light Controller Blocks Blinks

Finding that his recently purchased LED Christmas lights defaulted to an annoying blinking pattern that took a ridiculous seven button presses to disable each time they were powered up, [Matthew Mi…

All Hail Your New Giant 555 Timer Overlord

You asked for it, and now you’ve got it. It’s taken more than a decade of accumulated complaining, but this gigantic 555 timer IC has finally gathered enough psychokinetic energy to tak…

Implementing A CPU Using 555 Timers And Logic Synthesis

There is many a comment on these here pages along the lines of “Why did you use a microcontroller, when you could just have easily used a 555 timer!” And, yes, we sometimes agree with t…

You Can Always Use An ATtiny Instead Of A 555

It’s a constant of writing for Hackaday, that whenever a project appears using a 555 timer, someone will say “You could have used a microcontroller to do that!”. It’s someth…

Is It Finally Time For Christmas Decorations?

[Arnov] is trying to get into the holiday spirit and is doing so the way he knows how. He was thinking of some cool decorations for his Christmas tree and decided the best decorations are the ones …

Treasure Hunting With A Handful Of Common Components

Sometimes simpler is better — when you don’t need the the computational power of an onboard microcontroller, it’s often best to rely on a simple circuit to get the job done. With …