Engineering on Friday Halloween: A Circuit to DIY For

Rise skull circuit! Blink your scary lights!

Yes, that’s all it does. It blinks the “eyes” like a flickering candle.

It’s a simple attempt to create randomness in the blinking, like a flickering candle, as I said. But if you watch long enough, you might see that it’s fairly stable. Two different frequencies are combined to simulate the effect. I was thinking of adding in some sort of floating transistor lead that might react to ambient conditions. A photodiode or microphone might do the trick. But the circuit would be a bit more dense.

Someone told me this was a scary image.

I asked whether it was the cat playing with the flame embers?

The grid/tile floor?

The fact that the schematic can create a blinking light circuit?

They never told me. The mystery remains.

Truth be told, it’s actually the circuit below from another Halloween drawing challenge I was in years ago. I wanted to do something more with it for you all, since I have a digital drawing tablet and all.

Today starts the countdown to the end of my cartoon series “Engineering on Friday” here at Electronic Design. It was fun to share. The drawing time ranged from 30 minutes to 16 hours, depending on the complexity. That time is the main reason for it ending.

Since I don’t get paid for drawing or posting these cartoons, I’m thinking my time might be better spent getting a second job. A side hustle. Something along those lines. Sad state of affairs that most everyone I know, engineers included, needs a side hustle to get by.

Not sure how many I will still post here. Maybe 4. Or maybe just 2 or 3. Who knows, could be just one.

This is week 4 of the Halloween series. One remains!

See the rest of my toons at the Engineering on Friday comic gallery.