Boldport sells many interesting soldering kits, inspired by old famous circuits. We got two of them:
We are using „The Tap“ (a touch sensor circuit) to turn on three of the eight LEDs from the „Cordwood Puzzle Too„.
The Tap – a touch sensor circuit from 1974 with three touch pads, a reset touch pad and three outputs. All components are THT and the circuit is only using logical gates, no microcontroller. Here is the website with the instructions and information:
https://boldport.com/shop/the-tap
The Cordwood Puzzle Too – this circuit is inspired by the cordwood technique used back in the 60’s, where the THT components were used to join two PCBs to save space. This circuit has 8 LEDs controlled by 8 MOSFETs. The gates will be connected to a header. All 8 LEDs are initially on, if you connect one of the gates to ground, the corresponding LED will turn off.
https://boldport.com/shop/cordwood-puzzle-too
It is a puzzle and the instructions were lost!! a real puzzle ;). The circuit is easy to follow. But you have to be careful when connecting the decoupling capacitor between Vcc and GND, also joining Vcc and GND from one PCB to the next one (Pic.4). The two PCBs are exactly the same, so when connected they are mirrored.
If you want to controll all 8 LEDs, you will have to join the gates from one PCB to the PCB where the header is soldered (Pic.5).
The circuit for each LED is as follows:
A very useful and detailed description of this puzzle can be found at Dan Carley’s website:
https://dan.carley.co/blog/2017/05/24/boldport-cordwood-puzzle-too/
MStronik 