While I understand basic electronics, I'm now learning to build a diy synth with these newer chips than when I was blinking LED's back in the 70's lol. But I learned of a chip back then that replaces the binary counter and the decoder (2 chips) with only one. It is the 4017. Will do the same thing this one does. But the bonus is it is one chip. It recieves the "clock" input and then outputs a small voltage at one of 10 pins. You thus can have up to a 10 note sequencer, but it could be any number up to that by putting a switch at each of these pins and then if you want 4 notes, close the switch on what would be the fifth note, but route that to the reset pin thru a normally open switch. Of course to keep it simple and not have a switch for each output, just wire it for an 8 note since that is a quite musical number so to speak beat wise. You can also cascade it for more outputs than 10. It's a neat chip and I used it a lot back then to create lighting effects with led's. I'm enjoying your video. Thank you for posting it. I'm learning a little at a time about these Osc. etc. A bit different than what I was doing with the Led's.
The perfect sort of project for near entry level hobbyists. My first sequencer was similar and provided hours of pleasure building it and then later playing with it. This one benefits from minimal parts and may be more instructive of certain principles as a consequence. Mine was a bit more sophisto but still used simple building blocks like a counter, a demultiplexer, and a couple of oscillators. Well done.
If you set the oscillator driving the CD4040 counter to 1Hz, wouldn't there be 1 second pauses in the sequencer output since the input will be oscillating 1sec on/1sec off?
This is a good question! What is actually going on inside the chip is that it's watching the clock pin (which is where we put the oscillator) and every time it sees a 0 to 1 transition, it adds 1 to the counter which we can then read from the 3 output pins. We then use that binary output (3 bit binary) to hoose one of 8 steps for our step sequencer. To summarise, the clock isn't 'enabling' the circuit like you might see with other chips, it's adding 1 to the counter :)
Enjoying these videos, thanks! Am I right in thinking that you could replace the two ICs here with one 4017 IC and get the same effect, just counting the pulses from the slower oscillator and resetting on the 9th step?
A bit late response, but 4017 is a bit tougher to implement I think. It goes logic high when the pin is on. It will not switch any input to an output I think. I think that you would need jfets and some additional components too. Maybe npn driving the jfet and you would also need a negative voltage rail. It might be that there is an easier way, but I don't know of such. Then again I don't know much :)
While I understand basic electronics, I'm now learning to build a diy synth with these newer chips than when I was blinking LED's back in the 70's lol. But I learned of a chip back then that replaces the binary counter and the decoder (2 chips) with only one. It is the 4017. Will do the same thing this one does. But the bonus is it is one chip. It recieves the "clock" input and then outputs a small voltage at one of 10 pins. You thus can have up to a 10 note sequencer, but it could be any number up to that by putting a switch at each of these pins and then if you want 4 notes, close the switch on what would be the fifth note, but route that to the reset pin thru a normally open switch. Of course to keep it simple and not have a switch for each output, just wire it for an 8 note since that is a quite musical number so to speak beat wise. You can also cascade it for more outputs than 10. It's a neat chip and I used it a lot back then to create lighting effects with led's. I'm enjoying your video. Thank you for posting it. I'm learning a little at a time about these Osc. etc. A bit different than what I was doing with the Led's.
The perfect sort of project for near entry level hobbyists. My first sequencer was similar and provided hours of pleasure building it and then later playing with it. This one benefits from minimal parts and may be more instructive of certain principles as a consequence. Mine was a bit more sophisto but still used simple building blocks like a counter, a demultiplexer, and a couple of oscillators. Well done.
Sounds like a great little sequencer! :)
Yeah i'm trying not to overwhelm people with tons of features. baby steps!
Thanks for watching!!
Thank you so much, had a blast making this. Looking forward to more of your videos!
love this series so far. great clear explanations
Great teaser at the end. Glad your teaching the next generation! Good things.
This is exactly what I've been after - thanks!
Any reason why you wouldn't use a single CD4017?
Thank you very much for all this information, very useful, and very well explained!
If you set the oscillator driving the CD4040 counter to 1Hz, wouldn't there be 1 second pauses in the sequencer output since the input will be oscillating 1sec on/1sec off?
This is a good question! What is actually going on inside the chip is that it's watching the clock pin (which is where we put the oscillator) and every time it sees a 0 to 1 transition, it adds 1 to the counter which we can then read from the 3 output pins. We then use that binary output (3 bit binary) to hoose one of 8 steps for our step sequencer. To summarise, the clock isn't 'enabling' the circuit like you might see with other chips, it's adding 1 to the counter :)
Enjoying these videos, thanks! Am I right in thinking that you could replace the two ICs here with one 4017 IC and get the same effect, just counting the pulses from the slower oscillator and resetting on the 9th step?
A bit late response, but 4017 is a bit tougher to implement I think. It goes logic high when the pin is on. It will not switch any input to an output I think. I think that you would need jfets and some additional components too. Maybe npn driving the jfet and you would also need a negative voltage rail.
It might be that there is an easier way, but I don't know of such. Then again I don't know much :)
So no pull down resistors
Cool video
What does CMOS mean?
Complimentary metal-oxide semiconductor
Is this a repeat of the last sequencer video??
Yeah i re-did this one as i got some comments that it was a bit hard to follow before!
Can't you just use a 4017 counter?
"We ALWAYS see clock inputs as a square wave".... The 1980's sucks through it's teeth... "Wellllllll......."
Young Hari Seldon