I decided I needed to try VV, and this circuit got my attention.
While I was filling out the stuff for a free sample of the TI chip, I noticed overnight shipping was an option, I figured there was no way they were going to overnight a FREE sample, but went ahead and chose it as the shipping option anyways. The next day I came home from work to a surprise package, woo TI is awesome!
Anyhow, after reading through this whole thread, I felt pretty comfortable with how this worked, and decided to throw something together.
There was a few people in here who talked about running the chip without capacitors, and I couldn't see any real reason that in this application that would be problematic, so I decided to not use the capacitors, and try to squeeze a small trimmer pot and 1/8 watt resistor right onto the chip itself to save room.
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I also didn't bother adding an LED, and just have the one main fire switch.
I had some 14500 batteries around, so I built it around a minimal AA sized battery holder, found at radioshack.
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I used Sculpey (an oven bake polymer clay) to cover it up a bit, and flare out the bottom for a nice base to stand on, and left a little hole for access to the potentiometer.
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It turned out great, this thing is working wonderfully!