555 Contest XuLA Board Winners

Scott Harris (USA) made the Sleep Stopper, a device that waits in the dark to wake-up the unsuspecting victim but then turns off when light hits it. How cruel!

Alexis Kotlowy (Australia) used twenty-three 555 timers to build an analog video game that lets you play a game of dodge ball on a TV screen using Atari paddles. Let's party like it's 1975!

Chris Jones (UK) used a chain of five 555 timers to sample a serial bit stream passed through an isolation transformer, rebuild the pulses into proper digital bits, determine the character boundaries, detect the presence of a particular character code, and generate a two-second pulse that drives a motor which strikes a drum with a stick. Take a look! Rube Goldberg lives!

Jonathan Thomson (USA) couldn't figure out what he wanted to build, so he built a 555 circuit that does everything. (Well, it does at least five things, which is close enough).

Le-Minh Pham-Dang (Germany) also couldn't decide what to enter in the contest, but he built six circuits, each of which does one thing: a multi-input NOR gate, an SR latch (using two of his NOR gates), a D flip-flop (using three of his SR latches), a stepper motor controller (using two of his D flip-flops and some of his NOR gates), a servo driver, and an RF analyzer add-on for a scope using a 555 sawtooth generator, a varactor and a cheap radio.

Bryan Carpenter (USA) had trouble with his students burning out expensive UV mercury lamps, so he created a 555 circuit that automates the turn-on/turn-off sequence.

Gerald Njio (Germany) used an inexpensive 555 to build a DC-to-DC boost converter for driving a 1W LED from a single AA cell. WARNING: Don't look at your monitor when he turns on the LED!

Christopher Berman (USA) built two audio projects: an LFO that he uses to generate guitar effects (with which he appears to have some talent), and a solar-controlled Theremin for creating that weird sci-fi movie music (with which he appears to have no talent).

Johnathan Dillon (USA) also built a Theremin. Unfortunately, he doesn't play it any better than Chris does!

Valentin Buck (Germany) created an inductivity meter by measuring the alternating current driven through an inductor by a 555 timer acting as an oscillator.