74xx Competition! Part 1

As some of you may know, Dangerous Prototypes is putting on this big competition out for circuits that use discrete logic chips like 7400's or 4000's. In case you haven't seen the prize list, I suggest you cruise on over the dangerousprototypes.com and check it out.

         A while ago (in sixth grade) I built a rocket launch controller exclusively out of 4000 series chips and  555 timer. It was all on a breadboard and pretty messy. Now, in ninth grade, I've decided to get it back together, but this time on a PCB. But wait, there's more! I'm etching it myself, so it has to one-sided. Yes, there will be some jumpers, and the 555 will be replaced by an ATTiny for controllability and simplicity, but the displays and such will all be discrete. The first part I'm etching is the ATTiny and 4017 circuit. It will drive a bargraph display. Later, the divide-by-ten output of the 4017 will drive a 4026 [EDIT: 4029] (BCD count-up/count-down), which will drive a 4511(BCD to seven-segment display driver), and another 4017, the tenth output of which will trigger a relay and thus the rocket. In case that doesn't make sense, here's a super-simple diagram:

Sorry for the poorly drawn lines...

Web Stuff

Hello, all. Just posting to say that I've been changing the HTML on the site a bit, so don't be surprised if some stuff changes. What I've done thus far is add a little "+1" thing next to Hackaday and PyroElectro in the link section to show that I was on there. It won't be anything major.

Whoa! Pageviews!

 So in case you didn't know, the blog just got picked up by not one but two of my favorite sites: PyroElectro and Hackaday! How cool! Because of this, page views shot up ridiculously. Here's a good graphic:

That's the pageview graph. I never quite realized how cool Blogger was until now because I also found out that most of the people looking at this in the past few days were in the U.S., Germany, the U.K., and Australia. Funny that content written in Maine would be read on the other side of the world... pretty awesome.

Anyway, a pretty cool couple of days for me. Thanks to Pyroelectro and Hackaday!