 and welcome to Slady Anna. Hi everybody and happy Sunday, happy Purim to you. I'm at my desk. I've been working a lot on like tax reports because it's tax season. So like, not as much harder as I would have liked but I did get a little bit done. I thought I could just show off some of the samples and the testers I've been working on. So let's go straight into the overhead. So the first one is, if you all remember a few weeks, maybe like a month ago, we did a design for the TCRT, hold on, the reflective sensor. This was like the only through a whole right angle IR reflective sensor that Digikey stocked but it was like inexpensive. So I made a little break up board for it with adjustable emitter resistance and then the signal level is analog. I mean, it's like digital but it's analog because it's like, you know, if you're a little farther it doesn't quite pull all the way to ground. It's ground when there's, the light is reflected and it's high when there's no light reflected. So let me just power this up. I'll show you the test. So as usual, I like to use my Metro 328 for testing and I just have this basic stem of cable to test it. So test the connector. So you can see it's lit and then as my finger gets closer this LED turns on and it triggers and then there you go, you can hear. You see, I really have to like get close but when this signal LED turns on this detects that the signal is low and triggers. So good test. This is good to go. I think, you know, I got this basically because I was gonna do some like floppy disk index sensing but it's also useful just in general when you wanna do because if you're using a like a disk or you're trying to detect something spinning these are very, very fast sensors and white and black material will reflect a different amount or silver. So you can use that to like do index sensing or like a spinning thing or like a wheel or like rotation sensor where you don't need a magnet. I don't want a magnet in my floppy drive. So that's one tester I got done, really simple. This tester is a little bit more complicated. So this is for the LTC 4316. So this is a really cool device. That's an iSquad C address translator and it will, you know, it's basically, it's a little annoying. You have to use two resistors to set the comparators to change like which bits you want to change. And it's like, I remember we did the math a couple of weeks or months ago and it's like a non, it's non-trivial. Like it's like, you can't really use a potentiometer because it's a voltage divider and the divider is like non-linear. Also that would be a little confusing if it's like you just tweak it until the value changes. So you did come up with like, okay, you can have two slides which is that change two bits, bits four and bits five and then bit six is always flipped just because that's kind of the way the math worked out. And then you can also have another four bits that change by, you can't have like one resistor on the X or low sides. You can change this resistor or short it to ground. You can get a couple more bits of changing value. So it's like, I couldn't, you know, like this chip can change all seven bits of the iSquad C address, but like without making the board really enormous and I couldn't use slide switches again. It's got very complicated and want to deal with it. So I was like, okay, well, you can have like four or five options. So the way I did this tester, go to the computer real fast is, oh, sorry, can you go back to the overhead real fast? I just showed that. So on the tester, I have it connected. So there's an input and output sides. There's like the input iSquad C and the output iSquad C where the address change happens. So I put a 24 LC 32 or whatever, like a iSquad CE problem on here. And those always have address 50 hex. And so you can determine, you know, as the address changes, you know that the address translator is working. So like I'm gonna say, I'll show the output. I see her. Yeah, so go to the computer. So this one, let's see. Okay, so the way I test is, I twiddle the bits on the XORL line and I verify that I get these three different addresses. So by doing like a light pull up or a, if I set the, using the internal pull up, that's like a 100 K resistor that sets the address to one thing. And then if I set the XORL to be high, that's another thing. And then if, you know, by default it's pulled low. And so that gets you 20. So grammar was 50, but then like the bits are flipped. So that basically kind of lets me test like all the functionality, including the enable pin. You have to toggle the enable pin in order to change the address. Like you can't just like change the resistance on the fly. It only samples that resistance at the beginning. So this is the low bits, which again, you know, I have a light pull down and then you can change it with an adjustable. And the high bits, which I have to set up this divider and then you can switch in or out two different resistors, 100 K and 280 K with the slight switches. So these two testers are good. So these will be, you know, I'm actually trying to get a new pace going where I have two new products a week. So last week I did the Trinky SHT 41 and 45. They're very similar, but they are like two different products. Okay, and then how am I doing on time? Okay, great. I'll do a couple more minutes and then we'll do some samples and then we'll change ours. Those are the testers I've been working on. So those were pretty straightforward. Oh, I did get a couple other cool samples in. So let's go ahead. So a couple other things I got. Okay, go to the overhead. Thanks. I got this QT BFF with the BNO 055 and a BMP 280. So this would be like barometric pressure. So altitude plus three axis location, like orientation. So, you know, just showing it on the back of the stomach QT. And they also got the USB host BFF. So this is a Max 3421E. And I couldn't fit a USB A port. I tried, but USB A port is actually like too big to fit here. So I just went with the micro B and then you can use those like on the go cables. I also set up for on the go. Like the ID pin is grounded, I think. So it'll show up at, you know, you can use this directly with it on the go cable. And I'll give you a USB host. I haven't tested this. I just got this. And then, if you all remember a couple of weeks ago, I also got this ultra precise temperature humidity sensor, the HTC 3020. So this came in also, so I was excited to use this one, test it out. And I got the PWM from Generator and like I totally got the math wrong. She's like, I was like, either this is gonna work immediately out of the box or I totally screwed it up. I totally screwed it up. So I had it so that the minimum frequency was the same as the opposite. Like the, so right here I was like, oh, it's up to 25K or up to 250 Hertz. But actually I, hold on. I got it the opposite way. So I made it so the minimum is 250, but it goes up to like infinite. So I have to like, I have to go back and do the math again. 555s are like that. They're either trivial or like, you're like, how do I get this going? So I'll figure that out. And then I got some other samples. So some of the samples I got. Oh, well yeah, I'm gonna, oh yeah, hold on. Okay, so I got some key switches. I had a request for some key switches. So these are switches. There's electrical switches, but they use a key. I actually like this one because it has the green and red to let you know whether it's connected or disconnected. So when it's red, when the key is, and this comes with a little mounting hex nut too, just like kind of nice. It doesn't come with a lock washer, but I don't know, you provide that. So my multimeter going here. And then this is open. So like no beep, open, open loop. Okay. And if I close it, or sorry, if it's like green, then it's shorted. So like it's an electrical switch, but like it's a mechanical electrical switch with a little key on it, which I think is kind of neat. So this one has, I mean like, I wouldn't use this for like security, but like, you know, for just basic like, oh, you know, maybe make it non-trivial to turn something on or off. I thought it would be funny to make a key keyboard. So like it would be a keyboard, but like it had like the QWERTY or like whatever 50 keys would be keys. And the keys would have like the character on it. And then you'd have to like go find it. So if you want to type a message, you have to like put one key at a time, maybe. All right. So that's a, that's one key sample. So I like that one, that one pretty good. And then I also had, this is more of like a kryptonite lock style. So this one comes with wires on it. And it's a little bit heftier. This one doesn't have like the markings on it, but let me see. Okay, it's like this. And then it's not as smooth, but it does work. I don't know. I mean like, they're both kind of good. I think I like the key key one more, but maybe I'll stock both in case there's some reason people want this. I mean, again, none of these are like secure. This one is nice. It does have the wires pre-soldered on. So that's that sample. And then, okay. Then I have these, I got this kind of cool toggle switch, which is also paddled out, but you need to have like a square cutout. And this one also has, yeah, this one has a blue LED. Oh, there you go. It's hard to hold it. Yeah, it has a blue LED. The only thing that's a little bit weird about the switch is that the power goes into here, and then this is a normally open, normally closed. You know, they're both normally open switches. And so when the switch goes on, it like switches the power in and out, which is like, okay, but it's like not how I would have, like this switch and the LED are not separated. They're like electrically connected. It's a little unusual. But I guess one nice thing is it's easy to wire it so that it's only lit when it's on because you connect the power on the normally open side. And then when you close it, it puts the voltage across the two LED pins. So I mean, I guess that's one nice thing. It's like less wiring, but you just have to make sure that the voltage you wanna switch is the same voltage as the LED, which maybe is okay. It's like 12 to, I think it's like 12, yeah, 9 to 24 volts. So it's like a kind of a wide, wide voltage. So this is not too bad. Kind of like the switching action on this. And then I also got similar, but this one does have separate LEDs is this rotating switch. So let's see if I can activate this. So I kind of like, it's got this nice, it has nice like indicator LED and then you can, this one, the indicator is separate from the switch. The switch is like totally electrically separated. So you see that there's two pins here for the LED. And then these are the mechanical switch, totally again, not connected. How do I kind of like it? I had the idea of getting these little items because we were looking at busy boards, like people who DIYed busy boards for babies and we're like, oh, cause we wanted to build one maybe. And I was like, I saw like these kinds of switches which are just like, oh, those are kind of neat. I like that they have the LED in there. They're very satisfying. All right, how are we doing on time? Okay, great, perfect. All right, so that's, that's what's on my desk. Not as many new designs, but you know, some samples that are coming in and two testers. So you all know it's gonna be in the store in about like two weeks. Okay, let's go to the computer and we're gonna go to the great. Search. The great search part you buy Digikey and Adafrit. Thanks, Digikey. Every single week later, a user power engineer can help you. Yes, you find the things you want on digikey.com later. What are you looking for this week on digikey.com? So what I think they do is sometimes if I don't have a great search, like I quickly just look on social media and be like, what are people looking for on Digikey? What did they find on Digikey that's kind of neat? To this person toy builder, we don't follow what I should, they make all sorts of electronic projects. And this was kind of a neat one that they talked about. They're like, oh, this is a jumper cable that you can solder in or maybe you can even use with headers that is ribbon cable with little crimps on it. And somebody was like, oh, where'd you get these? And they said, oh, I got them Digikey. And this was like a total like flashback because I used almost identical cables on the Zoxbox, like the first project that we worked on. One of the first products from Adafruit. Let me see if I can find it on ribbon. Okay, it was, it was just slightly different. I mean, it's similar, it's not flex cables, it's literally ribbon. And then it had these little like stripped-ish ends on it and you would, you could pull these off and solder them in. And basically there was two boards on the Zoxbox. There's the main board and the IO board. And this, maybe it was the finishing section. Okay, so you would cut these ribbons and solder them between the two boards and it would connect all like the IO. And at the time, this made sense to me because we're like, oh, well, like you had point one and cheddar and then this way you could connect the two pieces easily. And we had to do a through-hole. That was the thing. If it was surface mount, I would have used like FPC cables but we had, we were using, we were trying to do the whole thing only through-hole. Just kind of nuts. So this was the, that remember that we had been cable. So I actually looked at that and was like, well, is this even still sold at, did you key the answer? Is, this is called Molex WMO9. And what's the website? And it was like, it is obsolete. It's not in stock anymore. It was available like in every kind of length and configuration. But as I go, well, maybe we could get these ribbon cables like this person said, oh, I got this one, did you key? If you do want to use something like this, let's find something similar. So since we don't want to get the ones that are not available, we'll do only active. And then we'll say normally stocking just to get rid of it. So a lot of these are FPCs which we don't want. We want this, right? Where it's like cables that have connectors so that we can look at the termination style. So when you say top and bottom with backers, that's definitely FPC. That's like a flex connector that goes into a contact with like little ears and you push them in. So you want completely exposed wires on both sides. And those are, you know, to solder in wires. And that'll get you a much smaller number of items. And you can see like, okay, these are looking right. I don't see the cribbed ones, but let's say we want one with like, well, we want 2.54 inch, 2.54 millimeters, so 0.1 inch pitch spacing and let's say six conductors, you know, and then we'll look at the lengths, you know, let's say three or four inches long. There's pretty much all the connectors that we had on the Zoxbox were about this length and size. So this is what we've got. So there's no data sheet. Wait, this is a data sheet, maybe. Okay. So these are wire to wire. I don't really have a lot of documentation. They do have all the family at least. So I'll say one thing, you know, I've used them and they're very inexpensive. This is one of the reasons we use them on the Zoxbox is these are, you know, it was basically the same price as having the individual wires and it was like nice because they were ordered and like they had some flexibility and they, you know, you could, you didn't have to worry about like secondary connectors. The one thing I will say that was an issue with these to watch out for is, is that if you solder them in directly to your board, you do wanna use hot glue where the connector touches the PCB because you're gonna have this, you know, whenever you have a flexing area and you have a stiff contact near the flex and this is why you saw on the FPCs, they're like, oh, we have, you know, stiffener on the back is that's exactly that flex to rigid intersection, that joint, exactly where you're gonna get breakages because you're gonna have something that's moving and something that refuses to move and that's where you're gonna get like the force that causes it to eventually crack. So we did have an issue where if folks were working on their Zoxbox a lot and they're moving a lot of pieces and they weren't, you know, they went back and they did some work after the fact they would crack and break the contacts because they were flexing in a bunch. These weren't really meant to flex a lot but they are like, again, if you're using only through-hole processes or you want to like, you know, you're reworking a board that already has 0.1 inch spacing this is kind of like the thing to use. The only other alternative is you solder in pin headers either right angle or straight and then you use like socket connectors but like those can actually get a little bit more expensive. I remember when we were pricing the Zoxbox this was definitely the least expensive way to make those contacts. And again, if you do it as the last step and there's not a lot of vibration a lot a lot of motion post installation, you're good to go. So this is my pick for the great search. Handy TE cables, not even from Molex anymore but TE's got your back. That's the show for tonight. We'll see everybody throughout the week. Thanks so much for joining us on this Sunday. That's Disco Lady Aida. Thanks everybody. Have a great day.