Entry 002: Prototyping the Circuit

I went to my local industrial electronics supplier and picked up a few things. He had the NTE4066B quad bilateral switches in stock so I picked up a few of those. Since the schematic calls for a +6V supply rail, I grabbed a NTE962 fixed 6V regulator. I also got a few other odds and ends that I didn't have lying around in my junk pile.

I built the circuit on a solderless breadboard. I didn't put any effort into making it look nice. The two wires coming in from the left supply the power from a 9V wall wart. The 962 on the right cuts that down to the desired 6V for the circuit. I ended up using some 1/2W resistors because that is all I had lying around in that value (330), but 1/4W resistors would have been fine.

The five wires running out the top were put into a cup of water. When the circuit was powered up, all of the LEDs came on. When a wire was removed from the water, the corresponding light went out. With that demonstration, I gave myself the go ahead to build the eight LED circuit on a permanent board. Yip Yip Yip Ah-huh!