 So you want to do the great search? Yeah, let's get right to it. Okay, so I'm gonna add the song back later But for now it's Great search brought you by digikey native reader every single week Lady Aida uses her powers of engineering to find stuff on Digikey.com we're gonna be talking about the 5-5 timer this week Lady Aida. What is a 5-5 timer a 5-5 also known as a triple nickel is a You know special chip that kind of was invented. I think in like 76 or so it's a all-in-one non microcontroller chip that can be used for Timing purposes or oscillator purposes that can do a delayed time It can do a repetitive like PWM type cycle. It can change duty cycle of a PWM It's really good for if you you don't want to get a microcontroller involved You just want a frequency generated or a pulse generated It's it's great It's really easy to use and there's like thousands of example circuits and we thought with the retro styling and also Because we have a video from Colin that came out this week I was like, oh, I should show people how you can get 5-5 fives and also 5-5 fives have really improved in capabilities like they're not as clunky and power hungry as it used to be they're actually Quite cool and easy to use in wide voltage ranges and very low current draws And if you're a super fan you've seen our puppet and our cartoon character And also our plushie we named the 5-5 timer Hans after the inventor of the 5-5 timer chip We don't have any of these more left, but that's some of the things that we've done over the years I also have a 5-5 timer stool from evil mad scientist laboratories that I that I bought and then Hans is one of the puppets in the circuit playground Get series and then Last week Colin did a 5-5 timer video. So I thought I'd play that and then we'll jump into the Search on digi game. Sure. Why is the triple 5 timer one of the best known ICs of all time? Well, it's been around a long time and there's a crazy amount of example circuits out there for it It's also cheap easy to use and most of all versatile A 5-5 5 timer can be used as a timer performing a single action after a specific period of time An oscillator generating a repeating waveform at a specific frequency A PWM signal generator Outputting a waveform of varying pulse width for controlling servo motors leds etc Plus less practical uses like using two of them together to create a stepped tone generator Aka tarry punk console For a modern update to the 5 5 5 consider the tlc 5 5 1 It's pin compatible with the original has a wider input voltage and higher accuracy Okay, so let's kick it off. You want to find these? Yeah, so um 5 5 5 timers, you know, they've been making them for decades and decades They're they're still useful all the time like we use them in our drawdio kits but we also see them a lot of times in you know learning to solder learning to engineer because They're a great way to You know make a simple circuit that you don't have to worry about software for more being the issue So many things have been replaced with microcontrollers But then you have to deal with microcontroller programming and like bootloaders and firmware and and computer and toolchain 5 5 5 it just it just always works and they're like rock solid. They're really hard to damage I've never seen a broken 5 5 5 They always seem to work as long as using them with the the ranges that they they function at um, so going to the computer I'll close this up Okay, so the any 5 5 5 is like the original classic And you can still get it if you happen to need like one of the originals um, let's say we want the dip package Oh, they're not in stock, but let's Oh, wait, let's see Dip any of these. Yes. No No, they're not in stock because they're obsolete um, but uh It looks like Rochester usually has them, but they're out of stock right now um, the original uh could run up to about 100 kilohertz um, it ran from about 4.5 to 16 volts and drew 10 milliamps. So, you know, that's that's good ttl logic Voltages and current you need a lot of voltage and a lot of current to use electronics Um, you know, you can run off of 5 volts, but you really need 5 volts. You can't run it lower um, that said, uh You know oscillators have improved, uh, quite a bit in the meantime Um, so if we just look for we'll just go to clock timing Programmable oscillators and then you know, these are all the 5 5 5s. Oh, you don't forget you can get dual 5 5 5s If you ever need, uh, you know, two circuits Two 5 5 5 circuits, I got tarry pump consoles I think usually you have one for frequency and one for like duty cycle or something So you'd have two oscillators. So it is possible to get, uh, two for once um, let's look at only You know ones that are in stock and available at digikey Thankfully you can get 5 5 5s. You can't get a lot of chips, but um, hey, you can even get them in uh, this is all I get VGA You have to build everything out of 5 5 5s. You can build everything out of 5 5 5s. Okay, so let's look at um 8 8 dip Because I think a lot of people when they're first playing with 5 5 5s on a breadboard. They want a breadboard their circuit. Um, so Let's also only look at active ones so I can not get anything that's not available Um, so here's something the first thing that's interesting. So, um, you know, the original was 4.5 to 16 volts Or 18 volts But chances are you want to be able to run off of a couple batteries And so, you know, we can select a range that's you know You could run it off of one or three volts up to 15. So that's kind of nice. Um There's also different uh frequency ranges. So, you know, you can get ones originally that was um, You know 100 kilohertz. We can see they go up to megahertz now And then the current the supply current is in the micro amp range So you can actually run these off of a battery now. There are um Different, you know, there's a lot of different ones like the tlc 5 5 1 that we used in the drawdio Has a special 100 milliamp outputs. You can actually use it Uh to drive a small speaker or I think maybe it's 10 milliamp outputs. You can drive a transistor to a speaker Um to check the do you there's some kind of interest like there's been interesting mods and hacks and tweaks to the 555 to increase Like the output current or um, you decrease the one time current um, so uh, do check that if you have special needs, but If you just want, you know, a simple 555 that's in stock, uh, tlc 555 will do the job looks like these are available There's 2000 of them or so Um, and this one can run from three to 15 volts Uh draws 360 micro amps and up to Uh 2.1 megahertz in through hole and it's, you know, less than a dollar In quantity it's 40 cents. So that's the thing. These are really cheap, too If you are doing, you know, workshop or you you want to teach people electronics or You want to mess around and you don't want to spend a lot of money 555 you can you can build projects for a year on 555s and you won't spend more than $10 on it so uh, check this out. You might also want to get a You know a parts pack from Adafruit with the resistors and a breadboard Put that together with the 555 and uh, you can be having a really good time even a couple potentiometers You can make blinking circuits buzzers I um I guess it's well. It's available somewhere I wrote an article when I was senior editor of popular science like almost 15 years ago now Maybe more um and what I did is I cracked open a digital camera And I had it so the Button would press over and over and I put the camera on a kite And I showed how to take photos from a kite because we didn't have drones back then that you could just get easily And I flew this digital camera up in the air and I took a bunch of photos and I showed how to do it And I had to make it fit all on a page a printed page Um, yeah, remember that there's yeah, it's a perfect example. It's like how to Replace a a signal that's one of those every 10 seconds it pulses Yes, could use a mic control or sure but a lot of people don't have it This and uh, you know big cap and two or three resistors and you're done It might be on google like scholar or whatever they scan in popular science. I mean look it up. No the maker. No And then uh at make when we launched the first issue we did aerial kite photography yes I think that was it was it was that my article and make No, that was uh, what was my article in the first make one. Yeah Uh, I don't remember maybe like about uh Maybe it was about uh Wave bubble All right, well, let's end the great search now. Yeah, so we can do other stuff. Okay, so that is That is a great search of getting a song later Okay