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Thanks Cookii. Please see other comments below, where I had a similar discussion with another poster. With regard to what you've said about this is how modern PCB software platforms operate, yes, I agree, and I found evidence of that which I intend to include in a follow-up video. I would have done it some months ago, but unfortunately I fell ill.

@@FiveFiveFiveFourOhOneSeven Sorry to hear that :( keep up the good work

Thanks.

Yes, sorry about giving you a bit of vertigo, Ben! I hope the content makes up for home-made feel of the video.

Are you talking about in the circuit diagram, Mike? If so, please see my introduction to Circuit Symbols video. We do it because it conveys the circuit's functionality, which makes the circuit's function clearer.

Thank you, Graham! Cheers!

Thank you, Shawn! Cheers!

@@FiveFiveFiveFourOhOneSeven I have been in the electronics hobby for a little over a year. Because I am severely dyslexic, I cannot design circuits using today's conventions. Your method has transformed my thinking. Almost immediately, my dyslexia disappeared utilizing your node modeling. What took me hours now only takes me seconds. You are a good instructor with good content!

Thank you for sharing your experience, Shawn. I'm glad this method helps you and I hope you enjoy learning electronics as much as I have done. Thank you for your kind words. Best wishes.

Thank you for your great comment, Jonathan. I'm glad you found the video useful and hope your design goes well.

Thank you for your kind comments. Yes, you can use it for any number of nodes. It's just a systematic approach; i.e. you've got to make sure you don't overlook any nodes. That's the purpose of this process - to not miss any! Just take your time a bit when marking up your schematic.

Oh, and I've just had another thought about what you may be referring to with power supply rails. Sometimes, power rails are not shown fully connected to all parts in a circuit but may be indicated as separate connections and then labelled, in which case they should be given the same node number. And in other cases, you may have two, or more, *separate* power rails with the same voltage, but the voltage sources are derived separately, in which case they'd be designated with different node numbers.

Thanks very much, Brendan. I'll check that out.

Thanks for your great comment, Kaleoride. I've had to give that a few minutes of thought to try and understand your perspective. I can see where you're coming from, and that would indeed give opportunities to save further space. With all the links made on the underside, I think the example could be shrunk down a further 0.3 - 0.4 inches across. I can see you perhaps made that suggestion with consideration for all links being made vertically, as I described in the video. However, the ideas about the layout I was suggesting was with the overall design consideration being that all components and links are landed on one side of the board - the component side, and all soldered connections are made on the track , or solder side. This is known as a single-sided build/ or board. Generally, when links end up on the underside, and believe me, I have been there many times, and I've got a video coming where I confess this, these are usually reserved for bodges!

@@FiveFiveFiveFourOhOneSeven I see. Thank you for taking the time.

Thanks. The method applies equally to zero/perf board. These types of boards allow you to take your nodes in even less constrained directions if you want to. The most important thing is to label nodes as you go. I might do a video on this. Might be an interesting exercise!

Hi @LimbaZero, thanks for your comment. The method described works with any base board system, including PCBs and perf board.

Ian H, you are a genius! That would indeed work. Node 5 is one track up from the bottom, and node 4 is three further tracks up so it would comfortably fit and still sit horizontally on the board. And that would save a further column, reducing it to 1.7 inches. I think I failed to spot that move because that diode was the first component I landed after placing the 555 down. Thanks!

@@FiveFiveFiveFourOhOneSeven Thanks, its much easier when I'm "standing on your shoulders" having watched the hard work you already put in and watched your video. I might see what using relaxed design considerations does as well just to get my head around - I last seriously played with electronics as a kid - I moved onto computers at 12.

Of course, if you use different design considerations, you get different outcomes. You could get this circuit down in size by a further 50% and the price you might pay for that might be that it is more difficult to debug if there is a problem. And you could use surface mount components and shrink it down by a further 50% but it might be a lot more difficult to assemble. You're free to choose what your design considerations are, weighing up pros and cons as you go. Thanks again for the feedback, Ian.

Thank you for your suggestions. I'm still finding my feet. Hopefully my setup will improve over time. What I'll say at present is the logistics are tricky and I keep bumping my noggin on the clamp holding my camera phone! I hope the value of my content makes up for the lack of a quality setup.

Thanks. Yes, I agree. I suspect a similar labelling and auditing method lies behind "net lists" in electronics CAD software. Someone out there might see this and be able to confirm this?

Thank you, Michael.

Thanks Dave!

You do you, Jim.

Thanks.

Proper sine wave inverters are pretty expensive which is why cheap ones are based on square wave generators. I've been interested in sine wave inverters too. I might look into that at some point.

And thanks for these great tips as well. Cheers.

Now why the heck didn't you tell me that before? But seriously, thanks, Andy, I just looked that up and that would have really saved me a fair bit of time when making this video. I never thought to google that. I found the Meccano sheet which looks good, and a couple of others. Thanks for the tip. AND for your second tip about Kicad. I'll look into that as well. Thanks very much.

LOL !@@FiveFiveFiveFourOhOneSeven

Thanks, André :-)

Thanks for your comments, Gary. The tech used in the video were pen, pencil, paper and MS Paint! Making the stripboard graphic in MS Paint was quite fiddly but now I have it as a quick-to-reproduce template so it may be a little easier for me if I do another graphic like this. Re: presets, yes, another commenter made the same suggestion and I agree, it provides a good way for the wiper to fail safe.

Thanks again :-)

Thank you Harold.

Hi Don, Where in the video or in the description did I describe this as an invention? This hardly qualifies as an invention as it is not novel enough to be patentable. Whilst you may have seen this in the seventies, of which I have no doubt, and it wouldn't surprise me if other engineers came up with the same method as it is such a logical process, I was not aware of any of those and I came up with it quite independently in the early 1990s. What I am pretty confident of is that I have never seen anyone else teach this, nor seen it described in any of the 200+ electronics text books and thousands of electronics magazines I have accumulated over the last 50 years. The way I have taught it in this tutorial is therefore quite unique, as described. I taught this to a couple of thousand students as part of first year undergraduate electronics courses at a British University over several years. I think my language was precise enough, without being clickbait.

I should have also added that the pinned comment shows another commenter who described his experience seeing and learning a similar process in 1978 when he was working at GEC. Like I said, it's hardly novel enough to be called an invention. But the process I developed and the way I teach it here, is novel.

@@FiveFiveFiveFourOhOneSeven At 0:40 seconds you describe it as a "unique method" that you "developed" over thirty years ago. That sounds to me a bit like claiming you invented the technique. I appreciate that you came up with it independently, and I especially appreciate that you teach your students the method, but perhaps you could have simply introduced it as a "method I use", rather than the way you did.

@@donbarr9487you’re rather pedantic. You put words in his mouth.

A very welcome new channel with a pleasant relaxed style. Looking forward to future content. Subbed.

Thank you, Chandrashekar :-)

Thanks for your feedback. Cheers.

Thanks. I'm glad you liked it. More interesting electronics videos coming soon.

Thanks for this. And very interesting too; I've just watched it. The pcb design is not very good and the circuit is interesting but would have benefitted from a couple of end stop resistors but the presenter/maker of the video was excellent in describing it and his channel is superb. Overall, very good. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

Please forgive me; I'm old.

Thanks!

Thanks Baladar. In one of my future projects, I'll be covering a new invention of mine, using a microphone, a small piezoelectric transducer and a miniature IC amplifier that all fits inside the ear canal. I call it a hearing aid.

@@FiveFiveFiveFourOhOneSeven Cool. That's gonna be a very useful project. I am not exactly sure about that is a new invention, though it can be a nice exercise for one who is learning how to put a simple and small amplifier together. But back to the topic, have you ever watched a video with decently set up audio levels? Man, those are wonderful. Usually people can understand every words in the video, without using a hearing aid. If you are properly educated (you must be, because you know how a normal modulated sinusoidal signal looks like and how it looks like when the signal is clipped), then you do know what dB means and what are the optimal values of it. Maybe you could let me know why do I think that you didn't use that knowledge during making this video. I will be very grateful for that.

There were a couple of honest issues. 1. I suffered a computer crash and lost all my software, including Premiere Pro, and now I have a replacement computer, I have switched video editors to DaVinci Resolve and I'm learning it. 2. I'm old, and learning new video editors takes me a long time. 3. The average recording level was at approx -12dB which isn't too bad, and sounded at a reasonable level when I listened to it before uploading. I'll try to improve in my future videos. I hope you'll stick around?

Thanks Boris.

Thank you for this gem of a comment, Mike! I have not heard of VeeCAD before and it looks really good, and I'll take a close look at this! And your second comment about using the unused leg of the preset by tying it to the wiper is excellent! And it would have meant that I could have declared node 11 as node 7 and node 12 as node 5. And you can see there is space on the board for two small links to make those connections. And the idea that they fail safe is just great. I had not considered that before.

@@FiveFiveFiveFourOhOneSeven Yes I recommend using VeeCAD . The tutorials by the actual author of the program are on YT 'VeeCAD Circuit Editor', very short and essential. I used TinyCAD and exported protel net lists. I think KiCad is probably better as it can generate files needed for pcb production at places like PCBway, but I have not tried this yet. And yes there is room on your layout to add the 2 wire links! Having said all that it is sometimes nicer to rest your eyes and do a design on paper.

Thanks Mike. I'll look into Kicad at some point as well. Cheers.

Thanks for your comment. Yes, that's a good method. I'm still arranging my workshop and getting all the right tools to hand for each subject I cover!

@@FiveFiveFiveFourOhOneSeven and by the way you have inspired me to bread board using your node method with copper striped bread boards. Another technique I want to incorporate is using a drill bit to cut the copper into separate nodes. I use to use a blade but it always looked messy.

Google "Stripboard track cutter" - they're widely available from good electronics suppliers for only 5 - 10 pounds/dollars. I'll be doing a video on electronics tools at some point too, featuring this. For breadboard, like you see in my videos, they often have numbers for each node of 5 holes. These help and work on the same principle. I'll be doing a video on taking one of these apart to show this. Good luck.

No.

Thank you for your comment, and you are perhaps, very observant. I did, indeed, not include the node numbers for the unused legs of the presets and pin 5 of the 555 in the first iteration of the layout. This was because I had done some preparation beforehand (videos like this are incredibly difficult and time consuming to make, and that includes ensuring continuity), and I had drawn the first layout iteration before redrawing the diagram for clarity. However, by the second iteration, you'll see the unused legs did have the node numbers included.

I'll be covering those too in later videos. Thanks.

Thanks!

Hi Luz, thank you. I'd be happy to consider it. Please can you tell me more in a DM? My email address is now on my profile page.

I'm not sure if you got the point of the tutorial? It wasn't specifically about the 555 astable timer circuit, which was just used as an example. It was about using node analysis to design a reliable and efficient layout. But as to the specific circuit, if you look carefully, I had to make other connections to those nodes as well, so, for example, the pins 6 & 2 node - node 4 - has 9 soldered connections to it, whilst node 1 has 8 soldered connections. By declaring the extra tracks, and deciding where they would be located, I saved space because they were used to make these additional connections to other components in the circuit so the net effect is to save space, not waste space for the sake of neatness. Thanks for the challenging comment - it's good to have these to test if the content creator knows his stuff or is talking BS.

Yes, I probably am! But reliable methods and good habits help.

Nice idea and I am thinking could use a bread board setting out the components as you have done using the tracks of the bread board and testing circuit before committing to soldering

Hi Alan, Yes. Breadboards work in a very similar way. The nodes are arranged in strips of 5, side by side. Some breadboards even have node numbers on them. I'll be doing a video describing them in detail at some point.

Thanks!

Magic smoke! Excellent, that was funny. Sounds like we're from the same vintage.

Thanks!

Thanks!