I wired up all the VCC and GND pins on all discrete components, as well as the chips. Here’s what the bottom of the board looks like so far:
I’m not spending a ton of engineering time on this circuit. So I didn’t do my due diligence and compute how much power each chip used and make sure that there will be enough amp carrying capability for each 30 gauge wire to each chip. To make sure that I can maximize this and avoid likely power problems, I ran a separate feeder wire from VCC to each chip and from GND to each chip. Daisy chaining the power would have been shorter wire runs, but I’m pretty confident it would also cause current problems. If you’re building this circuit, just keep that in mind.
What’s Next?
I’ll probably beep out the connections to make sure that I have them wired correctly. That will require me to connect one side of my meter to the ground, then, from the top side of the board, go down each GND connection in my list and make sure I have a connection (without any chips in their socket). Then, I’ll do the same for VCC between the power bar and the expected VCC connections. Once that is complete, then I can move on to the next step.
Next, I’m going to wire the clock. I already checked the clock module with my oscilloscope, and I’m getting a clean square wave. I have yellow-colored wire for the clock signal. Once I’m happy with that, then it’s on to the data signals, which I’ll do in white-colored wire.
I haven’t decided if I’m going to wire up the piezo noise maker. I’ll probably add that later, with a switch so I can turn off the sound. Just in case I’m demoing this thing at work or something.
Somewhere soon, I’ll plug in all the ICs and make sure the 5v supply is adequate. I’m pretty sure I have a large enough supply (it’s a 6A supply), but you just never know.
Once I complete the whole thing, I’ll have to make up modified blueprints to post with the substitute chips that I used. Then if you want to build the circuit using the same ICs I used, you can just follow the circuit diagram and my spreadsheet for the wire map without translating.