The 555 timer is a staple in electronics. From hobbyists to evil mad scientists, it’s simplicity of internal components allows for a wide array of complex use cases that has all of us engineers using the device over and over again. Universities design courses around it because it demonstrates the amazing things you can do with the simple fundamentals of electronics.

Eric, my good friend, partner, and founder, teamed up with some folks at Evil Mad Scientists to design a board made of discrete components. Since the 555 timer is made of a simple logical blocks, it’s still hard for a student or hobbyist to figure out what’s going on inside those blocks. Here is a block diagram:

Their idea is wonderful. Expose the guts of the device, give the engineer access to the good stuff so they can probe every point in the circuit.

They had the clever idea of making the device look like a blown up version of the chip. Absolutely brilliant, and for those wanting to get into electronics, this would fit beautifully into any educational building block.