r/electronics

Stable states: Two stable states

Working idea:

• Press Trigger (S₁) —> Output goes high

• Press Reset (S₂) —> Output goes low

• Output remains in that state until next input.

Oh dear

I didn't know about these things until recently.

I've found them to be the handiest things ever for doing test and measurement work because they convert any bare wire into a banana plug-able wire. So instead of connecting to a bare wire with an alligator clip and having an exposed connection, I clip one of these onto the wire and plug it directly into the banana port it needs to connect to - multimeter, signal generator, power supply, etc.

I also use these with banana plug to BNC converters on my oscilloscope. Obviously this isn't as good as a regular shielded oscilloscope probe for some applications but for others it is just fine. It's much better than having an exposed wire to probe connection in a lot of situations.

This is an LED blinkenlights type of thing, driven by 74HC14 Schmitt-trigger inverters driving the LEDs directly; and 74HC157 multiplexers to select different sequences.

It's my first time using such tiny components - the matrix area of the board needs to be clear of components but I needed to keep the rest of the board as small as possible while cramming in lots of capacitors and resistors.

I know some of you solder this stuff but I can't begin to imagine doing so so I left it to JLCPCB - OTOH I'm still an electronics novice so I'm impressed/amazed/astounded it worked!