I’ve seen a lot of engineering religious wars over the decades. Chances are, you have as well. Here’s a very partial list of some wars I’ve seen:
- Motorola 6800 versus Intel 8080
- Motorola 68000 versus Intel 8086
- Microsoft Basic versus DEC Basic
- C versus <your favorite programming language here>
- Verilog Versus VHDL
- AMD x86 versus Intel x86
- RISC versus CISC
- Arm versus <your favorite microprocessor here>
- RISC-V versus <your favorite microprocessor here>
Feel free to add to this list in the comments below.
These engineering wars, er, discussions, are certainly entertaining, and they have generated a lot of heat and light over the years. To be honest, I suspect I’ve seen far more heat than light coming from these discussions.
One of the strangest discussions I’ve seen recently pits the Raspberry Pi Pico RP2040 microcontroller against the humble, durable 555 timer. This LinkedIn discussion starts with a photo meme submitted by Aisler, a quick-turn contract electronics manufacturer (CEM) in Germany. The meme shows a tech-heavy air pistol shooter competing against Turkish shooter and Internet phenom Yusuf Dikec at the 2024 Summer Olympics and compares the tech-heavy shooter with the RP2040 microcontroller while comparing Dikec to the 555 timer chip. This surprising war was fought on LinkedIn. Here’s an edited transcript:
Aisler
It’s an exaggeration but the fact is that many people choose a microcontroller for simple tasks that could be accomplished by an analog circuit.
Keep it simple!
A tech-heavy air pistol shooter competes against Turkish shooter and Internet phenom Yusuf Dikec at the 2024 Summer Olympics. Image credit: Asler
Steve Leibson, Principal Analyst Emeritus, Tirias Research/Editor/B2B Technology Marketer/Storyteller/Content Ninja/Evangelist/Engineer/IEEE Senior Member/Poet
If a 555 is all you need to achieve semi-accurate timing or frequencies, then by all means you should go ahead and use it. However, it’s not just a 555, because a 555 by itself doesn’t do anything. You’ll also need some resistors and capacitors. Meanwhile, an RP2040 can implement an entire system and give you accurate timing and frequency generation as a side effect.
Jonny Doin, Founder, CEO at GridVortex Systems
Steve Leibson, if you need timing and frequency, use a small FPGA with an internal PLL.
The 555 generic glue of yesterday is now an iCE40 FPGA. Same size, lower component count, nanosecond precision. 🙂
Steve Leibson, Principal Analyst Emeritus, Tirias Research/Editor/B2B Technology Marketer/Storyteller/Content Ninja/Evangelist/Engineer/IEEE Senior Member/Poet
Jonny Doin, When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Frank M, Field Application Engineer at Phoenics Electronics
Steve Leibson I think “when you have a jackhammer…”
OK… I can accept a 556… an FPGA seems a bit exceptional for a timer.
Jonny Doin, Founder, CEO at GridVortex Systems
Steve Leibson
>> … When you have a hammer …
I used to think like that. After all, an FPGA for small circuits and timing generators seems uber overkill.
But again, a small FPGA, that can be easily soldered by hand, and costs less than $3, and can be easily programmed in VHDL with zero cost tools, that does not seem overkill at all.
I have a number of expensive Xilinx boards and tools, but thinking about it, I purchased a few Lattice iCE40 chips, and started using them for these small glue logic things, with a small VHDL description.
They are simple, reliable, and amazingly robust. They are what the 74lsxxx and CD4000 were in an electronics Lab some time ago.
Frank M, Field Application Engineer at Phoenics Electronics
Jonny Doin Last check, a single NE555 is $0.46.
Sure, if you have more need for more logic; more cost and features can be useful.
But using the image as the “spec”, no more logic is even implied. So, we can presume that $0.46 single cost is all that is needed.
Jonny Doin, Founder, CEO at GridVortex Systems
Frank M,
Don’t take me wrong, I like the analog robustness of a 555.
I mention the very low cost of these small FPGAs, not to match BOM production costs, but to note that the costs and complexity are sufficiently low that this is a good general solution for these small needs, to be a valuable addition to the Lab.
I still have a lot of generic parts and discrete transistors laying around in drawers, and may even have a handful of 555 somewhere.
But on the most recent projects I am using small FPGAs and writing VHDL for these needs, and the change was good.
But I don’t try to fit a square peg in a round hole. Some circuits need pure analog solutions, for example when you need ultra-low noise and ultra-high DC precision in a Lab amplifier.
Steve Leibson, Principal Analyst Emeritus, Tirias Research/Editor/B2B Technology Marketer/Storyteller/Content Ninja/Evangelist/Engineer/IEEE Senior Member/Poet
The 555 celebrated its 50th birthday a couple of years ago. Here’s a link to my article celebrating that birthday: Happy 50th Birthday to the Signetics 555 Timer IC: A Tribute to Hans Camenzind, an Extraordinary Analog Engineer
Richard Aspinall, EE Consulting/Contract Work
I just explored this question today. However, although there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a 555, many circuits have additional tasks that sum up to a digital controller providing the easiest solution to the complete functionality.
Pablo Olivera Brizzio, Golden Visa Holder | Director Corporate Innovation | Technology Generalist | Serial Inventor | •Master’s in Blockchain Technologies•B.S. Engineering Management•A.S. Electronics Engineering Technology
Richard Aspinall like having to change a few resistance values just to change the duty cycle…😎
Clyde Shappee, Experienced Embedded Systems Engineer
Richard Aspinall The part, NE555 is underrated IMHO. I was tired of crappy simulation models, so I wrote a behavioral one with NGSPICE. In so doing, I really learned a lot about the part and ended up with a very good (not ideal by no means) model.
Isidor Akpan, Electrical /Electronic, Electronic Circuit designer, Embedded systems developer and product technologies
It is because they don’t know what electronics is all about.
DAVID YOUNG, Senior Principal Electronic Engineer at MKS Instruments
I’m actually adding a 555 timer into a board design at the moment used as the timing element in an over-current detection hiccup generator circuit. Coupled with a comparator to do over-current threshold sensing, the 555 timer to provides adjustable over-current hiccup delay and turn-off timing in one-shot mode. Simple solution needing only a handful of parts.
My initial introduction to the 555 timer was using it as the PWM chip for a DCDC converter in college. Thank you, Gregory Wierzba, for introducing me to the 555 timer. I still have the books and notes from several of your classes that I took while at MSU.
Pablo Olivera Brizzio, Golden Visa Holder | Director Corporate Innovation | Technology Generalist | Serial Inventor | •Master’s in Blockchain Technologies•B.S. Engineering Management•A.S. Electronics Engineering Technology
In general, I would argue, that using a microcontroller for simple tasks that could be accomplished by an analogue circuit, gives a sense of more control, power over the design and the final solution.
The Microcontroller = More control.
It allows us to be more NERDS, adjust parameters we never thought it was possible/needed.
That’s why we like MICROS, over simple solutions 😎.
P.D. There are also very, very simple micros around, yet powerful.
Cyril Martin, Consumer electronic products, semiconductor and signal processing development, with a strong focus on multimedia.
Could it be because a NE555 ends up 2x more expensive than many 32 bit microcontrollers, without the flexibility?
TOSIN O, Founder| STEM Certified| Process Automation Consultant| Tech Expert & Developer of the first IoT based monitoring system used by Nigerian Electricity Grid
I got amazed when people enthusiastically use a whole computer to solve what a simple chip could do
Hevandyr Barbuto, Técnico em Eletrônica Desenvolvedor de Sistemas
Just enough for the job.
Well, what side are you on: the Raspberry Pi Pico or the 555? Please comment below.
Microsoft BASIC vs DEC BASIC vs Dartmouth BASIC: Dartmouth BASIC was a compiler running on Dartmouth Time-Sharing System, a multi-processor mainframe disk-based system, so had features that diskless microprocessor BASIC interpreters lacked.
1960s shortwave radio-receiver radio-frequency circuits, bipolar transistors vs vacuum tubes: Transistors were lower power, but tubes had better linearity and higher dynamic range.
The Basic variant I used was HP Basic, starting with the HP 1000 minicomputer and HP 9830 desktop computer.
F*#k NE555.
GreenPaks eat them for dinner. They are at similar price, but MUCH smaller, programmable and WAY more powerful.
And they can do MANY mroe things. some have FET switch, some have ADC or DAC, there is at leasst one with a FRIGGIN “H” MOSFET BRIDGE.
GreenPaks rule.
It’s amazing how the anonymity of Internet avatars can bring out the worst tendencies in some.
RasPi has a strong tendency to attract morons that couldn’t initialize a microcontroller, much less program even a simple loop if their life depended on it.
Their “projects” and “solutions” are usually heavilly duck-taped braindead blobs that one wouldn’t want to stand anywhere near, let alone use them.
Perhaps you’re confusing the Raspberry Pi, based on a cellphone processor and often used as an entry-level tool for learning how to program, with the Raspberry Pi Pico, which is a very capable microcontroller. The two are very different. I’m aware of some very advanced embedded products based on the Pico that were created by some extremely talented programmers. In any case, casting shade on student programmers does not reflect well on the shader.