Morse Code

Plug a computer chip into the connector.  LEDs slowly blink out morse code that spells a person’s name.

The first of a series of electronic Mad Wrapper schemes showed up on Christmas 1988. The party became very excited yet baffled, by the pile of presents tagged with a simple computer chip. Another present marked to everyone concealed a plastic box topped with a few LED lights and a connector plugging in a power supply, also provided, and more importantly a second connector to hold a computer chip! Once everything is together, the LEDs began endlessly blinking a message in Morse Code different for every chip. “TO DON FROM THE MAD WRAPPER”

Ingredients

  • up/down counter chip
  • 74ls74 inverter
  • resistors
  • capacitor
  • LEDs

Basis of many great projects

This electronic circuit is adaptable to many future great projects. While this is a somewhat interesting project, a much better one is the LED Daemons.  The “Magic Wand” circuit is nearly the same — it simply runs faster.

Here is the circuit for the “Magic Wand”.  The morse code only needs two LEDs and runs at a slower clock rate.