Simple Counting Circuit

[jbchrist]

Hey,
I'm a noobie to electronics and was wondering where I could get some basic information on making my own counting circuit. All it needs to do is count up by 1's everytime the user hits a button.
It would also be nice to output this to the user on a LCD (or whatever may be better).
If there is a book or website out there that someone could point me to that would be great.


John :idea:

 

[-=GST=- Nemisis (cs/cz)]

use a BCD counter/decoder chip with a 7 seg. search for a bcd counter/decoder on google. i belive its a 4511 but im not sure.

 

[jbchrist]

Thanks....but are you speaking english??? :shock: If you don't mind would you dumb that down for me.

I'm really new to this. I mean REALLY new.

John

 

[Optikon]

Thanks....but are you speaking english??? :shock: If you don't mind would you dumb that down for me.

I'm really new to this. I mean REALLY new.

John

The BCD means inary [C]oded [D]ecimal. You want to work with decimal but these devices count in binary. Give it a binary count and it will output (decode the count) into another binary number that could represent the digits 0-9 (known as BCD format)

The 7 seg means 7 segment display. It is an arrangement of 7 small LED bars. When you light up certain "segments" you can make a shape of sorts. If you light up certain ones the right way, you can make the lighted shapes look like numbers (0-9).

So technically, you would take your BCD/counting circuit and wire it up to the 7 segment display. End result = hit the button, 0 is displayed, hit it again 1 is displayed.. Of course I left out all of the crucial wiring details but I think at first you should just grasp what Nemisis is talking about.
He recommended doing a google search. Do that. Some of the circuit diagrams you will find will show you the things described previously. Some of them won't - there are many ways to design electronics to do what you want to do.

The 4511 number he spit out was his best guess at an actual part number for one of the IC's that he was thinking about (like the BCD/decoder) Don't worry about that now, first figure out how you will accomplish with electronics what it is you intend to do (button activated counting) You can find part numbers later on once you are convinced you are ready to build your design.

good luck!

 

[Valente]

im acutualy doing this right now and the IC that im using is a 74LS47. now that gives you low out puts so you might want to know if your 7 seg is a common anode or common cathode. if its common cathode use a 74LS48 and if its the other use the 47

 

[jbeng]

The 4511 chip will connect to LED's (common anode or cathode, depending on how you connect it), LCD's (non-mulitplexed), lamps or vacuum fluorescent displays. It's quite a versatile display drive chip. But to also count, you'll also need counter chips. For a 4-digit display, that would be at least 8 IC chips total (4 counters+ 4 display drivers).
If you're looking for a counter/display driver combination, the chip called ICM7224 from Maxim (and others) will display counts to 4 1/2 digits (maximum count=19999) and will drive a LCD display directly. You can also connect more than one together to count higher than 19999. Here's a link to the datasheet for it:https://www.electro-tech-online.com/custompdfs/2004/09/ICM7224-ICM7225.pdf

JB