Spark Fun offers a battery-powered experimenter’s logic block kit that provides a visual representation of digital logic gates. It includes the battery and logic blocks with LEDs showing the ON or OFF state of each gate. The blocks plug into one another and there is a time delay built into each one so that the logical flow can be seen. Like everything digital, the demonstrations are very simple in the beginning and rapidly become more advanced.
This educational kit consists of the three most fundamental logic gates: AND, OR and NOT. They can be combined to make more complex configurations. Additionally, there is what Spark Fun calls input blocks. They have manually operated switches, making for ON and OFF outputs. There is a built-in LED in each input and logic block to indicate status, logic high or logic low. Additionally, there is a power block containing the battery. It plugs into the last gate in the circuit and power all others.
It is a simple matter to connect input blocks, gates and the power block to demonstrate various configurations. For example, an odd number of NOT gates will not pass the signal while an even number will output a logic high value. The kit includes a jumper cable so the output of the last gate can become the input of the first. And there are splitters which can be combined making for more complex circuits.
Educational organizations can obtain multiple kits for classroom use and in combination to make more advanced projects. The instruction book, included, contains simple projects and information on Boolean algebra notation, truth tables and Venn diagrams.
Instructions for more elaborate demonstrations include discussions of:
A two-input AND gate
A three-input AND gate
NANDs, NORs and DeMorgan’s laws
Combinational logic
A ring oscillator
An SR latch
A two-to-one multiplexer
XOR gate
An oscillator, to take one example, has an output that fluctuates. The wave can be sine, square, ramp, pulse or it can take any of numerous forms. Besides using op amps, crystals and 555 ICs, oscillation can be created by properly configuring logic gates. An odd number of NOT gates, the output of the last in the series connected to the input of the first, will produce oscillation.
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