The IT Crowd: 'The Internet'

When I saw this classic scene from The IT Crowd, I chuckled to myself thinking "I could build one of those." So with my friend's birthday (she introduced me to the show) I immediately cooked this concept up as sort of the ultimate birthday present/conversation piece. It's not an exact replica, but it wasn't intended to be either. Honestly, any black box with a large blinking LED gets the point across. We got a lot of strange reactions that night at the bar. I gave a second one to a friend who's been getting a lot of mileage out of it at the office he works at.

Here is the end result:

It's a fairly simple design consisting of a 555 timer, LED, a battery holder, and a few caps and resistors. Obviously, there are various ways to put something like this together. My main focus was on keeping it cheap and simple. I never aimed to get the same size box size that they had on the IT Crowd, I just went for something plastic, black, big enough to hold the parts, and cheap. I feel like I totally lucked out on finding that LED. I figured they'd used some kind of lamp which would never fit into my vision of a box operated on 2 batteries. Heck, I even considered stuffing it into a tiny box with AAA batteries just to scale it down for a 3mm LED.

Timing:

I also designed the timer circuit with the emphasis of being easy on the batteries. I originally wanted Ton=1sec and Toff=2sec, what I got from my supply of resistors was Ton=.76sec and Toff=.69sec. Since I was working with a limited number of 0603 sized resistors I wasn't really up for stacking a bunch of 1 meg resistors in series. They just bridge too nicely across the DIP pins.

For a comprehensive 555 Timer resource: LM555 Timer Circuits

Procedure:

1. Cut the PCB Board down to size so that it's a wider than the 8-Pin Dip and long enough fit in the PCB board slats on the inside of the enclosure.
2. Drill the hole for the LED in the bottom of the box (The Lid will be the bottom, this will hide the screws) I forget what drill size I used.
3. Glue the 555 Timer chip to the PCB Board using JB Weld.
4. Glue the Battery holder into the box bottom using JB Weld.
5. Let the JB Weld sit for at least a few hours or preferably overnight. It's just not fast.
6. Solder the components. I connected everything directly to the IC. I used a solid 24-Gauge wire for the two pin to pin connections on the IC. I used a thinner braided wire that I salvaged from an old VGA cable for the connections between the LED and the IC.
7. When everything is wired up. Put the batteries in. It should flash on for about a second, and off for about a second.
8. Secure wires and PCB board to the box with hot glue

Schematic:

The Parts List:

1, ST Microelectronics, TS55CN, IC Timer CMOS Single LP 8-DP

2, Kemet, C322C103K5R5TA, Capacitor 0.01UF 50V 10% Ceramic Radial

1, TDK Corporation, FK24X7R1E105K, Capacitor 1uF X7R Ceramic Radial

1, MPD, BH2AA-W-ND, Battery holder for 2-AA cells wire leads

1, Bud Industries, CU-1874-B, Box ABS 5.3 x 2.94 x 1.95 Black

1, Lumex, SSI-LXH1090ID, LED 10mm Red Panel Mount

1, 100K Resistor

1, 1Meg Resistor

1, 470R Resistor

Also,

a piece of Twin Industries, 7100-062-4565, Unclad PC Board.

some wires, JB Weld, and hot glue

JB Weld is a two part epoxy that you can get at most hardware stores.

I use the hot glue to secure the wires and the PCB board because it's easy to apply, and just as easy to undo.

Some more pictures: