Countdown, Audio Trigger, and Light Device

The premise for this device is as follows:

1. Slam your hand down against a button.
2. Mega huge countdown initiates on mega huge seven segment displays.
3. Simultaneously an audio player is triggered to play themed audio during the mega countdown.
4. At the end of the countdown our high amperage lighting slams on in a blaze of glory!

As cool as this project sounds, it was never deployed in production; but a prototype was made!

Prototype

Due to the number of lines each seven segment requires, I implemented a MM74HC595M-ND shift register! Using this particular shift register the way I have it configured, I can control a monstrous seven lines with a mere three. What's even better is that if I hooked up all three displays, I could chain these shift registers on the three control lines for giga-loads of control.

The brains behind the prototype are the Teensy 2.0 from PJRC. Despite the fact that the Teensy platform is Arduino compatible, I enjoy programming microcontrollers from their data sheets in C...because that's how I started out.

Moving on to the brawn behind the high amperage lighting we find a beautiful MOSFET; the IXTA8N50P-ND. The final number of lighting segments on the project was to be determined during prototyping, so I wanted a MOSFET I knew would handle a lot that could be triggered from our 5V based microcontroller.

It was disappointing that this project never went into production, but it is fun to run the prototype non-stop some days. I am pretty sure my neighbors wonder what the blinding red flashing light is every half minute. The prototype was setup to run in a continuous test cycle to ensure the stability of the system. It has run without problems for over half a year so far!