Friday, April 7, 2023

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Unoffical safety car

Recently I was basking in the noise and fragrance of World Superbikes when I noticed some flashing lights. Atop the safety cars were red repeater lights and I started to wonder if that could be reproduced using a breadboard and a 555 timer.

It turns out that two 555 timers are required and that is exactly what is in a 556 IC.

I modelled the circuit using two 555 chips because of the limitations of the software, but built it using a 556 as seen below.



Apart from a little hiccup involving some missing links between trigger and threshold, the circuit works really well, exactly as simulated.

In fact, I attached it to an actual car for that final dash of realism to compare it to the original safety car footage from Phillip Island!


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