Logic Gates

Question

I made an Excel Spreadsheet for Logic gates. Anyone want it? Amongst other stuff; I decoded 6 bit BCD to 64 independent gates. One for each number and zero. I watched the video on 7 segment displays and added/reconfigured the gates into 2 4 bit strings (ones & tens) for two 4 in 7 out chips as shown in the video. Then I duplicated the chip, all with Logic Gates. I wrapped it up with an Excel formula based pair of 7 segment displays from the Logic Gates 1s & 0s. You may need Excel formula knowledge to take full advantage of this but you can make anything you want. I think this would be handy for element14 for showing the concept in a big way. What I ask in return is a little help here and there. I'm not looking for a burdensome commitment or tutor, just someone who could simply state a term or resource that I could look-up when I ask a question. If anyone is interested let me know and I'll send it to you. You can decided if it is worth a deal. I lack the math skills for flipping the poles on various magnets which is my preferred subject. Maybe one of you is good at such things. Anyway, it was fun to learn and make and now it will likely die in a cold dark folder on my computer. Please ask for it.

ajcc · Answer

Hi Jeff! That sounds like an Excellent spreadsheet! You should write a blog about it and share how you're using the formulas to do binary as I'm sure a lot of people would find this interesting! Or if it's unfinished and you've only come part way you could start a discussion and tell us how far you've gotten or what your ideas are? If you want to see an element14 episode on using Excel formulas for electronics work then you could suggest it . As for getting help with your magnets you're free to ask the experts on the community here at element14 any time any day. /Adrian.

ajcc · Answer

There are people from all around the world in this community so delay between answers is something we are used to. On top of that a lot of users are professional engineers and only check in on weekends and evenings. So don't worry about being "late" with answers. On this community we share our knowledge and projects, discuss our problems and ideas so limiting your work to a single set of eyes isn't something I want to do. When you blog about it many more eyes will get to see it and learn from you. Some of those eyes might really enjoy the challenges you give them. On top of that there's a great backlog of blogs created by users of this community over the years, so what you write today might benefit someone in five years time. If you don't feel like blogging here is what you want to do then that's also fine. You can still check in with your findings, results or questions any time. /Adrian.

ajcc · Answer

Trying things out in Excel is a great way to learn new things indeed. Welcome to the element14 community! There's an introduction to new users if you're curious what this site is about. The 4-channel switch you're talking about might be a mux? It was very common power 4000-series bilateral switches/muxes (such as the classic 4016) from a split power-supply (plus, minus and ground) when used to switch analog signals that goes negative. If you feed a negative voltage into a logic chip powered by Vdd and GND then things will not work, as the protection diodes will short the input to ground. If you're looking at them as digital gates I can fully understand why this would be confusing. A short summary about what your Excel file does is a good start, maybe some images demonstrating things like your nice BCD to 7-segment decoder? The easiest way to share the file is to attach it to a blog post: In the bottom right corner is a little paper clip: Hope that helps and I'm looking forward to seeing your digital logic blogs /Adrian