I'm in an Electronics class at my school and I'm having difficulty with making a circuit that uses a 555 timer IC and a 4017 IC to display 10 LEDs in a sequential pattern. I started it on a breadboard, and when I initially hooked it all up, and flipped the switch, found that nothing happened. So I told my teacher about it, and he said "Well, I told you those red LEDs were bad, go get some of the clear ones."
So I pulled out the first LED, and put it back in backwards because my teacher did also say that they had reversed polarity from when they were being produced. So I put one in backwards, and found that it turned on. But the weird part is that the one I had in backwards compared to the others was the opposite of what it should be. When all the others were off, this one was on. And when it should have blinked on, it blinked off. So I put another one in backwards, and found that the two that were backwards would stay on and off at the same time. If one was on, the other was, and if one was off, the other was. So I put more and more backwards, until I have half forwards and half backwards. Then I notice something. The backwards ones would all be off when any single one of them should have been off.
In other words, if any one of them should have been off assuming the circuit worked exactly as it should have, then all of them were off, but it still stayed in tune. They all just (so you could say) "worked as a group".
If anyone has made this circuit already and experienced the same problem as me, and has been able to solve it, can you post how you did so, or if you know what's the problem? Come 5th period Monday afternoon, I'm going to replace the IC's to make sure that they weren't the problem, and triple check to make sure that everything is plugged in as they all should be according to the schematic, but if neither of those work, then I'm not sure what I'm going to do about it (by the way, my teacher thinks it's just the timer resetting the IC, but I really don't think that's the problem, and all of my classmates are still stuck on simple circuits, so I can't ask any of them for help. The last time I asked one, he just played around with the LEDs and where they were connected, and I almost had to rebuild the whole thing (again!, but don't ask) because I almost missed where he plugged the negative end of one of the LEDs into). My teacher wants me to solder one together for his daughter (and I don't know why he won't do it himself, but whatever, at least then he'll let me solder one together to keep for free), but I don't want to solder together a circuit I know to not be working as it should be, and I haven't already done all I can to fix it.
So I pulled out the first LED, and put it back in backwards because my teacher did also say that they had reversed polarity from when they were being produced. So I put one in backwards, and found that it turned on. But the weird part is that the one I had in backwards compared to the others was the opposite of what it should be. When all the others were off, this one was on. And when it should have blinked on, it blinked off. So I put another one in backwards, and found that the two that were backwards would stay on and off at the same time. If one was on, the other was, and if one was off, the other was. So I put more and more backwards, until I have half forwards and half backwards. Then I notice something. The backwards ones would all be off when any single one of them should have been off.
In other words, if any one of them should have been off assuming the circuit worked exactly as it should have, then all of them were off, but it still stayed in tune. They all just (so you could say) "worked as a group".
If anyone has made this circuit already and experienced the same problem as me, and has been able to solve it, can you post how you did so, or if you know what's the problem? Come 5th period Monday afternoon, I'm going to replace the IC's to make sure that they weren't the problem, and triple check to make sure that everything is plugged in as they all should be according to the schematic, but if neither of those work, then I'm not sure what I'm going to do about it (by the way, my teacher thinks it's just the timer resetting the IC, but I really don't think that's the problem, and all of my classmates are still stuck on simple circuits, so I can't ask any of them for help. The last time I asked one, he just played around with the LEDs and where they were connected, and I almost had to rebuild the whole thing (again!, but don't ask) because I almost missed where he plugged the negative end of one of the LEDs into). My teacher wants me to solder one together for his daughter (and I don't know why he won't do it himself, but whatever, at least then he'll let me solder one together to keep for free), but I don't want to solder together a circuit I know to not be working as it should be, and I haven't already done all I can to fix it.