This year I started a new study: Computer Science. I expected to be a lot of programming, and a bit hardware, but it turned out that I am wrong. We are doing a lot more hardware, and designing circuits and whatever. We can test all the circuits at school, were are a lot of FPGAs (we use the EPM7032SLC44-5), along with a clock, 8 LEDs, and a BCD 7-segment display. Here are some things I created (don't expect complex things though):

- A 3-bits adder, connected to a BCD 7-segment display

full_addr is a small circuit I designed to add 2 bits and a carry, and the output is the sum and the carry. Since our 7-segment display can only display 0-9 and not A-F, some additions results in a nonsense display, but I'm currently working on a circuit (a replacement of the 7447 IC) that can display A-F as well.


It uses S0-S2 for input 1, and S3-S5 for input 2, so as you can see, here it adds 011+001 = 4

- Some kind of microcontroller

It uses 3 inputs, and it has 8 actions based on that inputs. I took a circuit from the Internet to store data (bits), that is what the module ram_bit is. bit_switch is supposed to switch the bit if SWITCH is 1. Hopefully you can figure out what all the 8 actions are, but it doesn't work properly

I'm designing these in MAX+ plus II, and that includes a simulator as well, so I can have different inputs over time, to make it more fun.

I'm sure there is a lot more fun to discover, but we will see later. What experiences do you guys have with circuitry?

Cool! I have some experiences with circuitry!!
I made a friend a simple alarm system for her room once (with a laser)
I haven't made quite as many circuits as I have disassembled though

I took apart a solar flashlight and wired a USB connector to it so it could charge the rechargeable battery via USB, rather than just charge via the built-in solar panel, which took FOREVER. I've also taken apart many, many things to see how they work, such as a broken RC heli, a soldering iron, and once a humidifier.

A few years ago, I took apart a printer and created a shredder. I then linked it up to an existing, working printer, put a recycling bin below my shredder, and, well, had a laugh.

Edit: the circuitry required wasn’t too bad. I re-wired some of the motors backwards, added (read: superglued and duct-taped) a project knife to the print head, and removed the ink safety thing.(removed and safety probably shouldn’t be used together) I also removed the back and ink-squirting-mechanism, as well as a few ramps to help guide the paper.

I then had it “print” a few sheets of black stripes, so paper went in, got sliced by the print head, and slid out the back.

The project died an unfortunate death when I forgot to plug it in and thought it was broken (and threw it out)

Stupid me.

This reminds me of this video:

Yeah, me too!

I thought of that video while posting (I love Tom Scott’s videos), but it wasn’t a thing when I did it.

We need to design boards as well, and it's always a fun task to complete this, while keeping it as compact as possible