JonDent - Exploring Electronic Music: Castle 111 Flip Flops

Sunday, 25 November 2018

Castle 111 Flip Flops - LZX video Synth

Some pics from my build of the Castle Flip Flops module.
It's a Eurorack format video module.

The module has three D type Flip Flops that share a common Clock and Reset.

So what's a flip flop? It's a bistable multivitrator. The outputs of Flip Flops have two stable states and can be used to store data. The Flip-Flop is also known as a latch. It's a fundamental building block in computers, counters, registers, memories, decoders & sequential logic.

Flip Flops are basically memory circuits. They can remember the logic state in which they were set. When a flip flop is set in one of its two possible states, it will remain in that condition until it is changed (or power is removed).

A D-type is also known as a Delay Flip flop, Data Latch or D-type Transparent Latch. They are used in Sequential Circuits.

The flip flop ic being used in this module is a SN74HC174N.
It's a a hex positive-edge-triggered D-type Flip-flop
It's a TTL series 74xx.

So Flip flops are like binary sample and holds. There are 3 so you can do a sample and hold type operation on the adc output for example. It has the effect of pixelizing. (Philip)

Anything can be used as an input, it doesn't need to be binary logic signals

The SN74HC174 contains 6 flipflops, but it appears only 3 are used in the module.
The basic D Flip Flop has a D (data) input and a clock input and outputs Q.
It also includes a CLR (Clear) control input.
Information at the data (D) inputs is transferred to the outputs (Q) on the positive-going edge of a clock (CLK) pulse. This flip-flop is a positive edge-triggered flip flop. This means that the flip flop changes output value only when the clock is at a positive edge (or rising clock edge).