Project 2.2.5 YAr HAr YOu ArE A PIrAtE

Project Manager: Me (Aviram Bhalla-Levine)
Project Members: Alison Jones and Matthew Harrison
Class: Digital Engineering
Date: 30 January 2016
Summary: In this project, students were given an opportunity to design and create a LED display board to display a desired message. The circuit was to use an asynchronous binary counter and NAND or NOR logic simplification to display the message as efficiently as possible. Teams were asked to create truth tables, logic expressions, a computer simulation, and a working prototype of their design. My team chose to display the message YAr HAr YOu ArE A PIrAtE, and chose NAND simplification over NOR.
My Role: In this project, I helped create the truth tables, write the logic expressions, simplify them, and preform the NAND or NOR simplifications as necessary. I helped write elements of the documentation including the design brief and the final breadboard design solution summary. I also wired the entirety of the breadboard in NAND simplified form, and optimized its efficiency to reduce the number of Integrated Circuits needed to five.
What I learned: The focus of this project was increasing the efficiency of our designs. Likewise, I learned how to wire logic in NAND directly from logic expressions and optimize the placement of components, especially resistors, on the breadboard. More importantly, I learned how to take initiative in the project and invest more time, as I did in the perfection of the breadboard, in order to end up with a very successful result, increasing the efficiency from 81.25% efficiency to 87.5% efficiency.
Media:

Our final design solution, a prototype of a display that can display the message YAr HAr YOu ArE A PIrAtE. The breadboard is split into three sections to increase efficiency: the logic is compacted into a small region to allow for the reuse of expressions, the resistors are placed around the display to ensure that LEDs receive the proper voltage in a somewhat orderly way, and the display is placed in the center for easy access and to avoid blocking it from sight.

A video of the circuit in action.