Hello! With the start of the new (and last) semester of high school, comes one of my most favourite, and yet the most brain-puzzling, patience-teaching, challenging courses: Computer Engineering (TEJ4MI). In this course, I’m so eager to build the infamous Firefighter Project (stay tuned for a post in June when I finish!), but before I can reach that stage, I must first master important concepts and get back into the computer engineering groove.
The Lab Prerequisite: Logic Gates
There are 10 breadboard labs (and by labs, it’s just a circuit, not a fancy science lab) that must be completed before getting started onto the Firefighter, and each one involves Logic Gates. Now, I have briefly spent time learning logic gates in the past, but not in the depth explored in this course. It’s truly amazing how much more there is to Logic Gates than I ever expected.
For example, I was aware of the seven gates, their truth tables, and their symbols, but learnt of how to represent them in equations for the first time, as well as how to convert from Gate to Equation and vice versa! Embarrassingly, I also finally realised that XOR (also known as EOR) stood for “Exclusively OR”. For some reason, I had never figured that out when learning it in the past. I guess learning is like reading a book or watching a particularly good movie- every time you notice something new!
Most cool of all though, I learned about Universal Gates, and figured out how to make every gate using only NANDs! Later, upon searching it up, I also found out that NOR is another universal gate- I really want to repeat the exercise of making every gate except with NORs. But for now, here are some of my notes and learning…
At first, it seemed to be all review:
Until came some exciting new learning:
Onto the Labs!
Now, when I say each of the breadboard labs involve Logic Gates, the first four labs are literally making logic gates: AND, OR, NOT, and NAND. The NAND lab introduces the 4011 Chip, which the next four labs use. The final two labs take the eighth lab to the next level and finished off the breadboarding lab adventures! Here’s a full list of what’s to come, in case your lost:
- AND
- OR
- NOT
- NAND
- CLOCK
- TIMER
- R-S FLIP FLOP
- BINARY COUNTER
- LED DISPLAY
- DIGITAL UP OR DOWN COUNTER
Due to the amount of circuits that will be made, I will covering 3-4 of the breadboard labs per post, over a total of three posts (excluding this one). This way, I won’t be cluttering the post board with 10 circuits, but also not creating an absolute monster of a post! I can’t wait to show off my journey making these labs and learning along the way,
See You Soon : )
-K.D
KD Tech Days 
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