When TV shows and movies need to use a phone number as part of the story, they typically use one that starts with 555. We spoke with an official historian at AT&T to find out why these three numbers ...

Sometimes the best inspiration is limitation. The 555 timer does “one thing” — compares a voltage to a couple thresholds and outputs a signal accordingly. It’s two comparators, a voltage ladder, and a ...

You can use a microcontroller to build a clock. After all, a clock is just something that counts the passage of time. The only problem is that microcontrollers can’t track time very accurately. They ...

The growth of battery-operated applications has put steady pressure on designers to steeply reduce their products’ operational power consumption and bring standby power as close to zero as possible by ...

Used in a variety of timer, pulse generation, and oscillator applications, the 555 was designed in 1971 by Hans Camenzind. A favorite for many engineers, the 555 is still in widespread use due to its ...