Experiment 16 Part 1 (Chapter 16) -- Invasion of the Wires!

I'm almost done with Experiment 16, but will need another day or so to finish it. In the meantime, I wanted to share some photos of the process of wiring this monster up. Charles always does a great job of keeping his wiring clean and presentable. Me? Not so much. I should probably invest the time (or money) in some of the small pre-bent connector wires that take less space on a breadboard. But not today.

I've got a HUGE box of jumper wire and I'm determined to get my money's worth from it! As you can see in the photos below, I did have a method to my madness. After inserting the five chips, I began with wiring up the 5V and GND connections. Red wires on the right, black wires to the left.

After that, I used colors for each of the buttons -- orange for A0, green for A1, yellow for B0, and blue for B1. White wires were used to make connections between leads on the chips. Even with the colors, it's a mess. Sorry.

Up next is the LEDs, resistors (220ohm) and testing. Do I expect it to work right on the first try? I hope so! I was pretty careful about checking my wiring, and using the colored wires for each button helped me keep track of all the connections. That said, it's a lot of wires, and I'm sure my tired eyes missed a connection or two. I'll work on that later today and hopefully post the results tomorrow.