This Summer, FCW held a workshop in Digital-Electronics: Gates.  The five participants were introduced to the essential gates (AND, OR, NAND, NOR, XOR, XNOR, and NOT) that make up all digital systems.  Hands-on lab exercises using digital trainers and solderless breadboards allowed the participants to connect the “chips” to switches and indicators so as to illustrate the basic logic functions.  Describing  digital circuits using logic diagrams, truth tables, and Boolean equations was also introduced.

The workshop was conducted by Michelle Suddreth, who has 30 years of experience with digital design and troubleshooting.

This is the first of 5 workshops in digital electronics.  In addition to  the workshop on Gates, additional workshops are planned as “MSI – Encoders, Decoders, and Multiplexing“, “MSI – Flip Flops, Counters, Shift Registers“, “Sequential Circuits“, and “Introduction to VHDL“.

These should provide enough information to allow additional circuitry to be used with microcontrollers or PLDs.