Hi,
I've been trying to cobble together a circuit design for about 2 months now to use in an electromechanical device but have been stumbling because of my lack of knowledge. Although I took some basic circuit classes and had to build ckts before, I'm still mechanical eng and therefore I have been trying to work around my lack of PCB knowledge since I started this project.
I'm trying to build a device with a static, 6 x 7-segment character LCD display that is essentially an elapsed timer (counts up). I've been taking apart alarm clocks thinking that I would get some type of useful information from them and figure out what kind of PCB components I should use in order to make it work. I noticed that all of the PCBs seem to depend primarily on a small IC that is hidden under a blob of plastic much like the attached picture. This might not have been the right way but since I was curious to see if I could get a model number, I tried grinding away the plastic to uncover the IC. It didn't seem to work but it did show me that between the various alarm clock models, the IC's are varying in size suggesting that there are various options and possibly manufacturers.
Therefore, I'm wondering if anybody could point me in the right direction since I seem to be wandering aimlessly without being able to find the answer. Could anybody tell me what type of IC's these are? Originally I thought they were very simple microcontrollers but now I'm starting to wonder if they are something else (maybe more of passive IC's?). They seem to have LCD controllers (or drivers?) embedded in them.
I'm also wondering what the feature is in a general IC that incorporates the counters and oscillator, and all other components to have an elapsed time counter. I could be completely off in this question but I learned somewhat about RTC's and thought there could be an equivalent component.
Also, could someone point me in the right direction on where to learn about the various types of PCB components (various logic gates, what a RTC is, etc)? I see some surface mounted little squares (maybe diodes?) but I'm not really sure what they are.
I've been trying to cobble together a circuit design for about 2 months now to use in an electromechanical device but have been stumbling because of my lack of knowledge. Although I took some basic circuit classes and had to build ckts before, I'm still mechanical eng and therefore I have been trying to work around my lack of PCB knowledge since I started this project.
I'm trying to build a device with a static, 6 x 7-segment character LCD display that is essentially an elapsed timer (counts up). I've been taking apart alarm clocks thinking that I would get some type of useful information from them and figure out what kind of PCB components I should use in order to make it work. I noticed that all of the PCBs seem to depend primarily on a small IC that is hidden under a blob of plastic much like the attached picture. This might not have been the right way but since I was curious to see if I could get a model number, I tried grinding away the plastic to uncover the IC. It didn't seem to work but it did show me that between the various alarm clock models, the IC's are varying in size suggesting that there are various options and possibly manufacturers.
Therefore, I'm wondering if anybody could point me in the right direction since I seem to be wandering aimlessly without being able to find the answer. Could anybody tell me what type of IC's these are? Originally I thought they were very simple microcontrollers but now I'm starting to wonder if they are something else (maybe more of passive IC's?). They seem to have LCD controllers (or drivers?) embedded in them.
I'm also wondering what the feature is in a general IC that incorporates the counters and oscillator, and all other components to have an elapsed time counter. I could be completely off in this question but I learned somewhat about RTC's and thought there could be an equivalent component.
Also, could someone point me in the right direction on where to learn about the various types of PCB components (various logic gates, what a RTC is, etc)? I see some surface mounted little squares (maybe diodes?) but I'm not really sure what they are.
