Hacker News Reader

The 555 tops the list, as usual. I have a sweet spot for it, since it was the first IC I was allowed to use for my own projects-even if I blame it for ushering in an entire era of blinkenlights...

View on HN

I blew the top of a 555 once! I still remember peering into the whole in the top where I could still see bits of the die left. Most of it was gone! I never worked out what happened and my teacher couldn't shed any light on it either.

Fortunately the ejected packaging didn't hit me in the eye!

I was just thinking earlier (after seeing a tutorial on "how to blink a laser with an Arduino", spoiler alert, it's the same as blinking any other light source!) that we need a dev board that just has a 555 on it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com