Soldering 101

Intro to through-hole soldering

We will solder a blinking, customizable name tag. We will also discuss and explain the design and the theory of operation.

A discrete astable BJT multivibrator feeding into a 74HC595 shift register, which drives the LEDs directly.
The shift register can serve up to 8 segments.
The LED matrix can partitioned arbitrarily column-wise: multiple columns can be grouped onto a single counter output.
each shift register output has one series current limiting resistor
multiple display modes:
- blink (CLK goes into enable)
- fill slowly, clear slowly (last output inverted feeds back)
- fill slowly, clear at once (last output inverted goes to reset)
- rotate (last output feeds back)
multivibrator speed can be adjusted with a pot
on/off switch?