The reason why I'm extremely proud of today's Thing? I came up with the idea, I sketched it out, I tested it in a half-arsed simulator, and then I implemented it and debugged it. And then, most importantly, it worked!
Well, maybe more importantly would be: what is it? It's a ring oscillator made from 555 timers. 555 timers are the same thing I used in the Thing a Day 2's Atari Punk Console. In that case, I had the 555 timers oscillating on their own -- which is important if you want to generate a sound. In this case, however, I have the 555 timers chained together in monostable mode -- which is to say, each of those black chips is telling the chip to its right when to turn off the light. With that red cord at the bottom, the chip to the further right tells the chip to the furthest left when to turn off. Hence, the ring.
I wasn't sure if it was going to work, especially when I had the light to the far right hooked up. In fact, I had uploaded a YouTube video and was about to write about tomorrow's Thing being a debugging session of what looked like a broken ring oscillator. Then, bam! Epiphany, debug, revideo, new post.
So, there you have it. The first thing that was born solely from my own mind* (that actually worked.)
* For what it's worth, the reason I can't find anything on Google about 555 ring oscillators is because it's horribly inefficient design. ;)
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