555: "You've got 8 pins…and one shot."

28 Jan 2011

Brilliant idea!

The talented Jeri Ellsworth & Chris Gammel have put together the ultimate 555 Contest. The inventor of the 555 timer chip, Hans Camenzind, will be judging along with Forrest Mims, famed author of the RadioShack mini-notebooks.

Find out more at the official site:

http://www.555contest.com/

There is also a nice overview of the contest on Hack-A-Day:

http://hackaday.com/2011/01/25/555-design-contest-win-1500-in-prizes/

Cheers,

Drew

http://twitter.com/pdp7

e14 Contributor over 15 years ago in reply to e14 Contributor

Tinkering is where most great ideas start !
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e14 Contributor over 15 years ago in reply to e14 Contributor

I my field I think we lost a little of the excitment about electronics that was there in the 80' and 90's. I'm excited to see the revival too. I think it's might have been started bycompanies like OReilly / Make going out on limb and promoting tinkering.
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e14 Contributor over 15 years ago

It's great to see a revival in hobby electronics that we've seen lately. This is a really interesting project! I can only think of "complex/extreme" category entries at the moment (in other words, outrageously unnecessary ).
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e14 Contributor over 15 years ago in reply to e14 Contributor

I'm blown away at how fast this came together. A week ago we were tweeting about how great the 555 is, someone mentioned it would be fun to have a contest and now there is over $5000 in prizes and people working on projects. I believe part of the magic is that Chris and I were clear from the beginning that we are not out to profit and that vendors can't minipulate the rules or have an exclusive deal. Anyone can donate and anyone can enter(except the two of us)

-Jer
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e14 Contributor over 15 years ago

This is really exciting! Sometimes it's great to bring things back to basics.

And wow, big names on the panel!
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