Experimental Four Decades Digital Counter

With the 4026 CMOS Integrated Circuit

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IC. With this IC you save a lot of time and money building digital counter/divider projects. In electronics books you will find different pulse counter circuits; most of them using TTL logic (transistor-transistor logic) that need two IC's for driving a seven segment LED display, which require more troublesome wiring and a lot of time.

This project shows how to build a fast speed four decades counter with an amazing digital integrated circuit...the 4026 CMOS

seven segment displays. To do this you add the facility of feeding it with voltages in the positive rail from 5 volts to 15 volts (some of them from 3 volts to 15 volts) and will realize that this IC is excellent to experiment with...and learn digital electronics.

The 4026 IC has the functions of counting and dividing and at the same time is a direct driver by itself to common cathode

Even though COS/MOS digital integrated circuits are very easy to manage, there are some precepts that must be taken into account:
(A)... You must be sure that the correct polarity is applied to the positive and negative pins from which the IC takes the feeding current. A wrong polarity will destroy the IC in a fraction of a second.

(B)... Energy sources of low impedance have to be applied to the input pins through a resistor of 1000 (or greater) ohms. (C)... Un-used input terminals must be tied to ground or to the plus rail, depending on logic requirements. (D)... The input pins are never allowed to float; they have to be connected to ground or to the positive rail via a 100K (or greater) ohm resistor.

I built the four decades counter on a breadboard panel with only a few components...
Four 4026 ICs Four 7 Segment Displays (common cathode) One 78LS05 IC Regulator Four 100K Ohm Resistor One 1000 Ohm Resistor One .1nF Capacitor One 100uF Capacitor
...and the necessary wires to interconnect these components.

decade according with the schematic, put it to work and be sure that all the numbers from 0 to 9 appear complete...one by one of the IC. Also on this website is the construction of a Pulse Generator.

If you decide to build the project, it is better to start with the first stage, the units decade. Once you have mounted this

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exact copy of the first stage; but pin number one of this second decade is connected to pin number five of the first decade (the carry out pin) without the 1000 ohm resistor. Notice again that the two decade counter counts from 0 to 99; and then start again from 0. With these two decade counters, you could have a 'your-turn' counter for the customers of a shop (a practical application).

When you are quite sure that the first decade works properly, continue with the construction of the second one, which is an

Now that you have received practice in building decades, you can add a third and a fourth one...building them exactly as the

previous ones. Don't forget to tie pin number five of the IC in the last built decade to the pin number one of the following IC of the next decade. Building the decades, one-by-one and testing them also one-by-one, you will finish the four decade counters with complete success.

Here are the Schematic Diagrams of the project...

Digital Counter

Five Volts Regulator

All the trials when building the project can be performed with a battery of 9 volts. Although if you would prefer to sustain the

counter working for long periods of time, it is better to use a 9vdc or 6vdc main power supply. I would assume a 9 volt battery would be exhausted in less then 1 hour.

The components for this project are quite cheap and don't require special knowledge to purchase them; but one must be

careful when buying the 7 segment LED displays. The 4026 IC works only with common cathode displays. Ask the employee in the shop to test the displays to be sure that they are common cathode. Common anode displays will not work with the 4026 IC. Look at the picture below for a visual inspection of the 'common cathode' LED.

This concludes the basic project of the 'Experimental Four Decades Digital Counter'. The next section will be on 'Improving Your Digital Counter'. Let us begin...

Improving Your Digital Counter

100K resistor and from this rail I made a connection to the central point of a conmutator. One of the other two terminals of the conmutator goes to the positive line and the other to the negative line. Thus you have a way of applying a high signal to pin #15 and the counter is RESET...all the displays go to zero. Then you move the conmutator to the negative line and the counter starts a new counting.

The integrated circuit 4026 has a SET/RESET pin: it is pin #15. From each chip I connected pin #15 to a common rail through a

Pin #3 of the IC also allows us to set the displays to the OFF state with the possibility of saving energy. To take advantage of this facility, I connected all the pins #3 again to a common rail and from this to the central point of another conmutator...one of the terminals of the conmutator goes to positive and the other to negative. When you throw the conmutator to the positive, all the displays are ON and if you make pin #3 negative, the displays are OFF. Nevertheless, in the OFF state of the displays, the counter continues counting.

Any digital counter needs that the input signals be free of spikes, especially if the signals come from mechanical switches, relays or similar gears. To avoid these spikes, I used a TTL integrated circuit which is quite compatible with CMOS integrated circuit. This is the 7413 IC that needs only two resistors and a capacitor to form a debouncing circuit; and to test that the counter performs correctly, I add a pulsator. Each time the pulsator is pressed, the counter advances one unit.

The Schematic Diagram of a Debouncing Circuit using the 7413 IC

I wish you plenty of success building this project to which your imagination can find practical applications! ...your friend, Pedro