Hello everyone. I've read posts here and there on this site, I've been bending stuff for about 3 years now. This is my first post (that I remember, any way).
I already posted this to a similar forum that I just joined, and I hope you don't mind me being a bit lame and posting the same message rather than retyping it:
Hi everyone! I'm starting to work with ICs and I have an idea in mind that I need to get out of my head.
I've been working with 4017s and 555s to make a sequencer that will in turn cue sounds from a toy. I want (I think) a clock signal supplied by a 555 because I want to be able to adjust not only the frequency of the clock signal but also the *length* of the clock pulse. I want (I think) 4017's so that I can vary the number of steps in my sequence.
My original source for the circuit I came up with is:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Bill_Bowden/page5.htmspecifically:
I used the cascaded 4017 18-stage sequencer circuit (above) to come up with this:
It cycles nicely through 16 steps. What I don't understand is what is going on with the logic gate created by the 1N914 diodes; I actually came up with this circuit just by playing with the one from the page I mentioned earlier, not through any math or innate understanding of ICs.
What I would like to do, but can't really figure out, is how to modify the circuit so that I can manually change the number of steps in the sequence. I'd like to be able to install maybe a rotary switch which would set the amount of steps in the sequence by connecting the necessary RESET pin to different pins from the 4017s . This would allow me to assemble and sequence patterns in different time signatures, but I don't know if it really works like that.
Is there a simpler way of cascading two 4017s?
Any body else out there working on similar sequencers?
Any comments, suggestions, questions, etc. are very welcome, this is uncharted territory
for me.
--Austin aka Creme Dementia
http://www.myspace.com/cremedementia