General > General Technical Chat
Is the 555 still a viable IC?
EPAIII:
Perhaps a bit late in this thread so you may need to read the first 20 posts which this follows.
I just want to say that I am fully aware of the value of programmable devices. I just looked in my personal stock which goes back for many years and I did find 10 555s and 3 556s. They were in a plastic drawer with the paper napkin packing on top of them from my last move back in 2011. So I haven't touched them since then.
OTOH, on the workbench to my immediate right and out in plain sight, there are several different types of single chip processors that I have been playing with. Arduino, Raspberry Pi, etc.
In this wonderful world of electronics that we live in, THERE IS ROOM FOR BOTH TYPES OF CIRCUITS!
PlainName:
Clearly, there is room for only one on your bench with the loser being relegated to the drawer :-DD
Smokey:
--- Quote from: PlainName on February 21, 2024, 10:47:04 pm ---Clearly, there is room for only one on your bench with the loser being relegated to the drawer :-DD
--- End quote ---
Hey you chips punks! Get off my lawn!
tszaboo:
--- Quote from: baldurn on February 19, 2024, 05:20:46 pm ---The ATtiny 212 is about $.4 in the same 8 pin package as the 555 chip. It might be more compared to 555 if you buy the later in quantities, but you save on other components. It won't accept the same voltage or current ranges as 555, but for the saved components you could pair it with a mosfet.
In circuit programming is really easy. Just make three pads (vcc, gnd and program). Touch it with a pogo pin device for a few seconds and it is programmed. Can easily be automated.
--- End quote ---
The other components are literally 0.1 Cents each in quantity, and you need like 10 of them?
Programming a board is expensive on the other hand. I looked at production programmers for microchip, the SOFTLOG ICP2 is about 500 EUR, so below ~10K boards the 555 wins hands down. Above 10K boards the time spent on programming is significant. A worker at 20 EUR/hour which is almost minimal wage, cannot program more than say 120 boards an hour, which is 16 cents. Microchip's programming fee for pre-programmed part is 5 cents for this part for 5K pieces.
And I can buy NE555 compatible parts for 2 cents in China.
baldurn:
That board also needs to be mounted in some product. The same worker or robot can do the programming. You will have a jig where you drop the board for a few seconds until a LED turns green. The worker will be mounting a board while the jig is programming the next board. This way the worker will never wait on the programmer and the extra working time per item is a few seconds at worst.
And really? Expensive to make a firmware that reads three ADCs and programs three PWM outputs accordingly? Anyone can do that in less than an hour, even a total beginner.
This is a strange product by the way. All popular multicolored LED strips these days are WS2812 based, which you could not possibly program without using a MCU. This simple MCU could do it however and with even less components (no MOSFETs).
Also the price for the programmer is really nothing as you can make your own using nothing but an old Arduino or Raspberry Pi Pico.
The Raspberry Pi Pico debug probe at €13: https://raspberrypi.dk/en/product/raspberry-pi-debug-probe/
If that is too much, you can get the Raspberry Pi Pico at €4 https://raspberrypi.dk/en/product/raspberry-pi-pico/ and download the software yourself. Takes less than 5 minutes to convert that thing to a debug probe.
Then all you need is a cable with three pogo pins and a small jig. I would 3D print it. I could easily design and print such a thing in about an hour.
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