Blink LED With 555 IC (Classic IC Circuit Diagram I)

This is Our First Tutorial From Classic IC Circuit Diagram Series. In our previously published article, we listed commonly used IC. There are some worldwide popular circuits with IC and our target is publishing some of them to Help the Arduino users to understand electronics in-depth. Blink is popular initial program in Arduino. Like Arduino, You Can Blink LED With 555 IC. In old days, instead of blinking LED, it was common to refer the phenomenon as flashing LED.

How to Blink LED With 555 IC

Theoretically it is important to find the details of 555 IC and learn it’s internal circuit. We will not go in to that matter. The circuit we will describe will blink LED at an interval of around 500ms using 555 timer IC and some of the other electronics components. We can, actually adjust the blink rate. If you wish to calculate the values of components for flashing the LED modifying the time interval to blink, then you need to download the 555 timer calculator tool. You can perform a web search with the phrase “555 timer calculator tool” to get the free tool. For example, these are some such tools :

How to blink LED with 555 IC is essentially a project for the beginners and is intended to make the Arduino users understand the basic principles and working of one popular IC.

There is a dot on 555 IC’s surface pointing the closest pin’s number as 1. Pin 3 is the output pin which generates an oscillation. The voltage goes high — low — high — low and that is called astable mode.

Required components :

1. 555 Timer IC – ONE
2. LED – ONE
3. ONE each – 100K Ohm, 470K Ohm, 270 Ohm resistor
4. ONE 1µF electrolytic capacitor
5. Breadboard
6. Few Jumper wires
7. Power supply (5V regulated or 5 to 9V battery)

 
Here is the circuit diagram :

There is not many more things to write just for the practical part.