{"id":1281,"date":"2014-02-02T00:03:41","date_gmt":"2014-02-01T23:03:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sciencetronics.com\/greenphotons\/?p=1281"},"modified":"2025-06-16T18:38:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T16:38:10","slug":"do-you-need-a-byte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sciencetronics.com\/greenphotons\/?p=1281","title":{"rendered":"Do you need a byte?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
You can get everything on eBay, but I have not found a breakout board to visualize a byte on LEDs.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My latest Instructable<\/a> is on the design of a breakout board to view the state of up to eight bits in a breadboard circuit. I don’t fell I have the time to repeat all the steps from the Instructable here, just let me tell you that it works nicely!<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The schematics of the circuit.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The circuit itself is simple: the input signals are buffered with 74AC573 transparent latch with a row of 8 LEDs attached to the outputs of the latch.<\/p>\n

The circuit board design, single sided, top-layer in a 1:1 PDF: 20140130_8led_top<\/a><\/p>\n

\"20<\/a>
20 remaining of 28 copies of the layout on a sheet of photo paper for the toner-transfer process.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"6<\/a>
6 of the 8 breakout boards of the first batch.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Drilling<\/a>
Drilling the holes for the pin-head connector.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The<\/a>
The parts for the circuit – I went for a surface-mounted design.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Soldering<\/a>
Soldering SMD by hand: applying tin to the pads.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Soldering<\/a>
Soldering SMD by hand: putting the device in place and fixing it with the soldering iron.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Soldering<\/a>
Soldering SMD by hand: starting the second row of devices.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Soldering<\/a>
Soldering SMD by hand: applying tin to the opposite corner pads of a chip.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Soldering<\/a>
Soldering SMD by hand: attaching the two prepared corners of the chip.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Soldering<\/a>
Soldering SMD by hand: soldering the remaining pins.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Soldering<\/a>
Soldering SMD by hand: I forgot soldering the other side of the resistors.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At this point I also discovered that I had soldered the LEDs the wrong way around!<\/p>\n

\"Soldering<\/a>
Soldering SMD by hand: all LEDs are desoldered again…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Soldering<\/a>
Soldering SMD by hand: Now the LEDs are in the right orientation.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Eagle<\/a>-files as a ZIP-archive: 20140130_8led<\/a><\/p>\n

And finally: Through-the-hole<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The same circuit as a through-the-hole layout for my favorite stripboards with 3-hole copper islands.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My latest Instructable is on the design of a breakout board to view the state of up to eight bits in a breadboard circuit. I don’t fell I have the time to repeat all the steps from the Instructable here, just let me tell you that it works nicely! The circuit itself is simple: the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-electronics_en","category-everything_en","entry","has-media"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.sciencetronics.com\/greenphotons\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/IMGP2401b_900.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p48grL-kF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sciencetronics.com\/greenphotons\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sciencetronics.com\/greenphotons\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sciencetronics.com\/greenphotons\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sciencetronics.com\/greenphotons\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sciencetronics.com\/greenphotons\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1281"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.sciencetronics.com\/greenphotons\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2443,"href":"https:\/\/www.sciencetronics.com\/greenphotons\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1281\/revisions\/2443"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sciencetronics.com\/greenphotons\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sciencetronics.com\/greenphotons\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sciencetronics.com\/greenphotons\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sciencetronics.com\/greenphotons\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}