 The Great Search Watcher by Digikey and Anifer. Thank you Digikey every single week. Lady editor user power of engineering to help you Yes, you find the things that you're looking for part substitutions Just about anything you could possibly imagine make or need on digikey.com lady What is the great search of the week this week? Okay? Somebody was asking me about this connector on the ESP 32 S3 Metro. Let's go there and show it off Oh, sorry the overhead. I mean apologies. Yeah So on this board, you know your classic Arduino headers and the SPI connector And then there's this and they're like, what is this connector? What do you have this here? This is a I call this an SWD connector, but technically that's not correct. It's a JTAG slash SWD connector But 98% of the time it's for SWD a single wire debug This is a two by five ten pin Shrouded IDC cable that is used on almost every arm core chip But also you can use it on like 10 silica with For JTAG debugging and this is used for trace debugging and like breakpoint debugging when you're when you need something better and like memory Analysis like you want to look look into the memory in the middle of debugging You know printfd debugging is is pretty common or a oscilloscope debugging I do it all the time But there's a lot of times we need something a little bit more powerful. Also on some chips. It's used for the programming part Some chips they don't you can't you don't have a built-in USB bootloader like the this one does where you can take the USB or through your and Bootload immediately. There's a ROM loader for a lot of chips. They come like blank blank blank. You need to load Code in and so for example You know here. I've got a A program where this is an atmel ice and You'll notice So tough to see but there you go Sam and AVR It uses those connectors as well to this cable and then you can connect here I don't have enough space for a full SWD connector. So I just have some wires and I have a breakout Instead and what I like about this breakout is it also shows you the pins. So this is the SWD pinout Which is you know power a bunch of grounds SD IO SD clock SDO which is the actual debugging if you're not just programming but you want to send data back and forth output The reset and then I don't know if I have I don't have the JTAG pinout here But maybe let's go to the computer and I'll show We do have this SWD I you know we stock in this adapters also available on digit key which also has The JTAG pinout. So SWD is a Cortex M zero specific Debugging interface JTAG is the universal one. So the pinout is also used for JTAG where you have you know MS clock data out data in for JTAG and it replaces this original Huge connector this 20 pin connector, which you know, ha would have a lot more possible Data transfer, but most people cannot fit these gigantic connectors on their PCBs It's bigger than the rest of it. These are much more compact And let me also so let me show so I had the AVR SWD so little show off two more options Okay, so can you go to the overhead again? I'll just show this quickly Another option is you know, I showed off this ST debugger What's interesting about because I'm you know be later be like what's what's a two-side shroud connector? There are sometimes where you want to have much more debug data going over you want like trace data and Scott actually did a stream Friday and last Friday about having a one of these longer connectors, you know, they look similar, but they're They're much longer This is your standard two by two by five connector and then this is a Two by eight. I think two by a connector So it adds another four pins which is used for a more debugging data and for that reason you might see See how it has it's it's shrouded So it's got like this two pieces of plastic here for the key and a piece of plastic here to help you orient But it doesn't have the full shrouding See how this one has for let you know for Sides because this longer style connector would not fit in so it's kind of like this is a like a backward compatibility Mechanical connection, but you still want to have the key. There's a little key a plastic key here You can you can see this plastic nubbin and then also of course Your your wonderful standard J-Link J-Tag and debugging by Seger a nice German company and You can use in this case you use a Seger. They have the old connector use that adapter and you go to this cable Okay, so now I've shown you this cable and the shrouding because that's important when you choose which one you want If you need to have you know compatibility with this wider shroud, but we're gonna just go look for this kind of standard two by five connector And then go to the computer again, please For our feather nrf, you know, we have here we sometimes stick it on our feathers It's like oh you want to debug it Here you go and then on the Metro rp2040 We also we have it here And on the metro Samd series Sorry samd21 Ditto, I like to you know in the metros I like to put them on there because there's space worse feathers. I don't always have space although I think the original feather rp2040 Um has a spot for it So sometimes I don't can put it on but it's like because it's like so It's not really used common. It's not used by Beginners and makers it's often used by more advanced people who are doing the software development So I put a spot and you can solder it in and I tend to use the smt Version but I will say there's a lot of people who use the two-hole version of this connector Okay, so it's a very long intro, but now let's go to digickey and find this part Okay, so we want Just go look under header because it's a header Um And you can see even the the default image sort of looks a little bit like what we want Now ironically if you go to this category that has 550,000 different components in it The first one is actually kind of what we're looking for but that's just like a total coincidence And you can see that it has a little pick plate on it That's the plastic piece for the pick in place to be able to pick it up because obviously it's got mostly pins So these are very very very popular headers, but Let's pretend that it isn't like the first thing on the list right just a little coincidence So let's look for active components only And we want it to have The most important thing to watch out for is the pitch you want it to be 1.27 millimeters or 0.05 inch pitch so it's Half half pitch half of what you're used to much the smaller and uh, let's uh Apply there's a lot there's a significant number of Boards that have that pitch Um, okay, so we want to have two rows this is a two by five and uh number of positions 10 And that's confusing because there's like a 10 plus eighth plower just ignore those we just want just want 10 and then um, we also want to do the number of positions loaded And this is confusing also originally I Click 10, but that was incorrect. What you want to click is all Or dash which is like, you know unknown Okay, so we did the pitch and then you need the row spacing Sometimes the pitch like between row pins is not the same as the row spacing. It can it can vary We want it to be the same so i'm going to pick uh, we'll Row spacing of 1.27 And then in this particular case, I'm going to say surface mount but again you can well, I'll do that actually next um The next thing that I do like to select is I want to have gold contacts I feel like these days it's like gold contacts are so much less likely to oxidize Um, you know tin tin plate, especially lead free tin plate, you know, it can get a little Dusty after a bit. Um, the gold is literally one atom thick So it's not like it's going to add a significant amount of expense But I feel like the quality is much better And then let's go with uh in stock Okay So now we can look at some of the options because you see that there's there's different shrouding I thought that was kind of the most interesting thing to note. So first off, there's through hole versions I find these annoying to solder. I find the pins are very close. I almost think like the surface mount's easier, but You can get through hole versions of these Um, you can get right angle So you know sticks out the end This is like the minimal style. It doesn't have Any shrouding at all However, I find yeah, these are not cheaper because we're not very common Let's see if we can find the uh two shroud. Yeah, here you go. So that's sort of what we saw on that um st Debugger where you can put in a two by five, but then you can have more pins Coming out the sides. Um, you know more expensive. This is going to be you know about two dollars a piece Not like 60 cents. So let's go with um surface mount Let's see where was that Shred out here surface mount only And let's say it's shrouded, but you know, I don't care if it's two wall or four wall But I don't want the unshrouded. I like to have the little Things you don't plug in You know backwards. I think that's that's wise if you're gonna pick a keyed connector SIG with a keying Um, all right. So next up, uh, let's look by price. Let's go by price And a couple good options here. So um, this comes in trays. This is for hand placement Um, I'm cnc tech, but they also have a version that comes on tape and reel and to be honest It's not that much more expensive. Um, you know the image will tray ones. I mean if you're If you happen to have a pick in place, I can pick it up But I find it much easier to go with tape and reel. So um, this one is in stock and it's, you know 60 cents a piece A good deal and then one thing to watch for is some Have little nubbins placement dots Let's see if I can I'll show you I think the Uh feather rp 2040 I'll show you You see here It has the mounting posts You can select to get ones with mounting posts Honestly, I've never had an issue with these snap. It's to protect you from snapping it off by accident As long as you push down and pull up when you're inserting and don't try to Wedge it back and forth. You shouldn't have an issue. Um, I don't know if they have Yeah, they do have board guide here I think it's what's called board guides maybe and shrouds Heeing shroud mating flange Let's see if that gets us ones that have Nubbins Let's see this one Now just oh it does have a board guide you can kind of see I think with posts Kind of hard to see but here is the post so you can get ones with posts If you so if you so desire um These are slightly different keyed versions of the keys and the On the edge there so this is meant to not be compatible at all some other connector um but You don't really need the keys. So I'm gonna go with this one. This is my pick 3220 10 300 tr from cnc tech a lovely swd connector. That's a good church You