I have a question regarding some behaviour of a 555 timer circuit in bistable mode. I attached a photo I found off the internet that is the one I’m using, the output goes to a 440 ohm resistor and then to a red LED also I’m using 10k pull up resistors. I noticed when I push the trigger pin switch and the light comes on, that sometimes when my hand is hovering over the circuit the LED goes out. I got curious and made sure not to bang into anything or touch anything and I would slowly bring my hand near the circuit, and almost half or more of the time the LED would turn off. Being more curious now I took the breadboard set up like a “bridge” (basically I have two small bins and I had the breadboard laying across so each end of the breadboard is resting on those bins and there’s nothing touching the bottom of the breadboard) I noticed that if I put my hand under the breadboard (without touching it at all!) the LED light on the output pin goes out. Getting more curious I held the breadboard by the sides so there was minimal contact and the light would work perfectly fine until I ran my hand close to (but still not touching) the breadboard. I tried this on different surfaces such as plastic bins, slabs of wood, the floor (lol) and on a glass table. It did it the least amount of times when laying on the plastic bin. I’m not using a anti static wrist strap but I’m curious if this is an environment issue or like a workstation issue? Or a simple fix with a anti static strap? It was kind of neat to play around with it like that but now I wonder about the last 2 years and all the heart ache from circuits not working properly even though I was CERTAIN I had built them exactly as per the diagrams. Also I tried 5 different 555 chips and 5 different breadboards with the same results. Any ideas or suggestions?
