Communications Project?

[Jimboo]

Hi guys,

Firstly I'd just like to say - great site. It'd be amazing if some of you could help me out with this.

I'm about to go into my second year of A levels (A2's) and I did Electronics AS (don't know how I have done yet). I was the lowest person in the class because all the rest of the guys are kinda geeks and me, I'm just after an electronics A level. I found it really hard and know I will next year, but I want to stick it out.

We have been given the task to make a project. We have to research ideas on the internet and we start on them in September. I wanted to do something a little complicated. Where others have chosen to do a 24 hour clock or infra-red thing, I want to do a communications system if it's feasable.

All I know is that I will be using SIPO or PISO, whatever they mean, and the two main chips I need so far (told by my tutor) will be a 74164 and a 74165. We're making them on "breadboards", I assume this is standard throughout all other electronics courses. Can you guys give me some advice on where to find these diagrams, how hard it will be to create, or any other ideas?

We are being marked on creativity and I liked my idea, but it seems complicated and I am not amazing at electronics.

I appreciate all posts, except those telling me that I have spelt something wrong (i'm not bothered)

Thanks very much in advance people.

 

[Papabravo]

SIPO and PISO are acronyms for

Serial In Parallel Out
         &
Parallel In Serial Out

The parts you mention are called shift registers. Each of them will have a clock input. A clock input is the thing that defines the point in time where things happen. What things you say? Glad you asked. On the rising edge of the clock input the data in the shift register moves over one position. That's cool you say, but how does the data get into or out of the shift register in the first place? Great question. There is another input called Shift/Load*. When it is high the shift register "shifts", but when it is low the shift register "loads" the values on the eight inputs into the "shift register"

What you need to do is track down the datasheets for those parts. I'll give the links this time, but once I show you the way you need to do it on your own.

74164
https://www.electro-tech-online.com/custompdfs/2007/07/sn74164.pdf
74165
https://www.electro-tech-online.com/custompdfs/2007/07/sn74165.pdf

As the datasheets clearly indicate these particular products are obsolete and no longer supplied. The reason is that they are standard TTL parts and nobody uses them any more because there are better alternatives. Your homework assignment is to tell me the part numbers of some shift registers you can actually buy. Consider

https://www.digikey.com

as an authoritative reference for the purposes of this assignment.

 

[TheVictim]

Creating digital circuits from discrete components is becoming a dying art. Why bother when you can program a microcontroller to do EXACTLY what you want and stick it in there?

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Creating digital circuits from discrete components is becoming a dying art. Why bother when you can program a microcontroller to do EXACTLY what you want and stick it in there?

Because it's a school assignment, and you need to learn basic electronics if you're ever going to be any good.

 

[HarveyH42]

You still need digital circuits outside of the MCU to save I/O pins, or reduce the load on the processor. It's true that many school assignments don't seem to have much practical use in the real world, but its the experience and the process of putting it all together.

 

[Hero999]

If you want fast parallel logic then programmable logic arrays are the normal way to go, one IC does the same job as 100s of logic gates!