Thanks for the recommendation. I'll have to try that out. I do have a absolute mess of external clocks sitting around, and a few other ICs that I really like. I like building things though, and I build them in my free time, and I build them for myself. Tossing a micro in allows me to use my time better and use my skills better.
Hobbyist micro-controllers also come in through-hole packages. I can solder pretty much anything that doesn't require a hot-plate, but it's a lot easier to prototype with through hole.
For instance, one of the things I'm building right now is a 4x8 array of 6"x6" flip-flop sign elements that I got as surplus from the highway department. Each element has a dual 68 ohm coil and runs at 24 volts. I'm basically designing a one-off. Rather than getting clever, I just drive the coils with a ULN2803 (one of the parts I keep around), and drive the ULN2803's with arduinos, and tie the whole thing together with a raspberry pi.
It's kind of a mess, but the arduinos mean I don't have to worry about timing, and I can ssh in to the raspberry pi. It's probably an order of magnitude more expensive and less elegant than something an EE would design, but it works, and it probably won't catch on fire.
> Perfection is always the final sacrifice before the alter of completion.
Nothing is ever perfect. You must always sacrifice perfection before a project is complete.
With the cheapness of Arduinos and Raspberry Pis, throwing a bunch of them together is always a potential solution.
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EDIT: I'm not sure a CPLD could have stopped the use of the ULN2803, although maybe it could have replaced the Arduinos. If the Arduinos were good enough however, then no harm-no-foul really.
Its just that a CPLD can implement things like a 27-bit shift register over SPI or I2C really easy (assuming you have some Verilog or VHDL coding skills). So maybe you'd be able to do Raspberry Pi -> CPLD -> ULN2803.
Hobbyist micro-controllers also come in through-hole packages. I can solder pretty much anything that doesn't require a hot-plate, but it's a lot easier to prototype with through hole.
For instance, one of the things I'm building right now is a 4x8 array of 6"x6" flip-flop sign elements that I got as surplus from the highway department. Each element has a dual 68 ohm coil and runs at 24 volts. I'm basically designing a one-off. Rather than getting clever, I just drive the coils with a ULN2803 (one of the parts I keep around), and drive the ULN2803's with arduinos, and tie the whole thing together with a raspberry pi.
It's kind of a mess, but the arduinos mean I don't have to worry about timing, and I can ssh in to the raspberry pi. It's probably an order of magnitude more expensive and less elegant than something an EE would design, but it works, and it probably won't catch on fire.