 Life in New York, it's Asus Engineer. Hey everybody and welcome to Ask Engineer. It's me Lady Aida with me, Mr. Lady Aida and the Maudib or the Emperor either way and we're Empire, sorry. And we're here at the Aida Fruit Factory in downtown Manhattan. We manufacture and teach and learn and solder and code and hack and make mistakes and learn from them. Yeah, sometimes. All the time. One thing before we even get started let me just say it right away so we follow all the rules. We had MassOn on site. We've always had MassOn on site. So recently, you know, we were able to take them off at our desks and stuff like that. But when we're at Aida Fruit, we have our MassOn. Everyone's gone for the day though, so it's just Lady Aida and I. So that's why we're not wearing MassOn. We live together. Because what I don't want to do is have someone you know in the comments. And so anyways, that is what's going on in New York. A lot of us are already boosted. Our team is safe. I'll talk about some of that stuff later, but that is why we're not wearing MassOn this second. So we're going to do a show tonight. We're going to ask an engineer. That's right. We've been doing this for like a decade plus. So they're fun. Yeah. All right. Want me to kick it off? Oh yeah, please kick it off. I'm going to kick it off. Okay. On tonight's show, the code is Kintsugi. Kintsugi embracing the damage because that is a way to go. Kintsugi's a code 10% off in the Aida Fruit store all the way up to midnight, probably ish. Anything in stock and we do have stuff in stock. Surprise, surprise, even with a global chip shortage and more. We're still treading water here. So use the code Kintsugi, load up your cart now, and check out before things are gone. We'll talk about our Aida Fruit live series of shows, including show and tell, time travel, look around, world makers, hackers, artists, engineers, news in the world, and more. Made in New York City factory footage, 3D printing. We got one of my favorite ones this week. I'm an MPI brought to you by Digikey and Aida Fruit. We look at something really cool from digikey.com that Lady Aida says, hey, I got my eye on this MPI. New products, top secret. We're going to answer your questions. We do that over on Discord, aidafruit.it slash discord or discord.gg slash aidafruit join all 31,000 of us, 24 seven, the virtual hacker space, place to get help and more all on Discord. And this is Ask an Engineer. That's what we do. All right, Lady Aida. So let's first do a little bit of news. Sorry, the Autobots and Decepticons are here and Omnicron is here as well. And, you know, it's what it is. Our entire team got vaccinated already. We didn't have to do any mandates. No exemptions were asked for. And our team's getting boosters and flu shots and all that. And then in New York City, they're saying, hey, when you're indoors, wear a mask. We're not wearing one now because two of us here. And then the CDC recommended everyone over the age of 18 an older get a COVID booster shot. Check with your doctor and all that stuff. But I'll say this as a company, as everyone got vaccinated, we didn't have anyone test positive. We've been in the clear for a really long time. Everyone took good care of each other. There is a way through this. Welcome to our lives, folks. It's just going to be, you know, whatever Autobot of the week is going to be, you know, up in our business. So please take good care of yourselves. If you need any help navigating things at your own company, we have a bunch of policies that's worked out really well for Aida for it. Feel free to email me, PTA, Aida for it here to help. And for regular biz stuff, Lady Aida, the code is Kintsugi. And the reason why it is, because I was thinking about, and I've told this story so many times, I was thinking about this beautiful art form where you repair broken pottery with gold and other resins. And look how amazing this is. And, you know, the cracks and the trauma could eventually be beautiful. And here's an artist who did this to themselves. This is their own artwork. And you could see they have this mask on and they have the, you know, a little bit of an art piece about COVID. But I thought this is kind of our lives right now. And, you know, we can fill these cracks and more and all the things that we have to glue together with something beautiful. So, you know, I thought that was going to be the code this week. But in addition to the code, we have free stuff. We do. We're back to freebies. We had a special freebie for the Feather Friday, Black Friday through the Cyber Monday, Circuit Python Monday. That's over. Actually, let me talk about that real fast. So, we ran out of these. The pink feathers are great. There's people in the chat. Take photos. Show them on social media and everything. They look beautiful. You're lucky you got them. We're going to have more later. We will. Yeah. But anyways, so first tier. Yeah. So, right now, we're back to our $99 Promo Proto giveaway. $149 or more. You get a Stemma QT board. Yeah. $199 or more. You get UPS Ground Shipping. And $299 or more. You get a free Circuit Playground Blue Fruit, which is the Bluetooth Low Energy, NR52840 version of the Circuit Playground Express. Okay. We do a series of live shows. And one of them that we do is called Show & Tell. We had some folks on Show & Tell tonight. I thought Philby's Retro Stuff was really good. Jay came by. Jay came by. And not only did Jay show his owl, but we showed Minerva, which I believe the inside of Minerva must be Jay's owl. Can I? Can I? Yeah. And I think it was Clash of the Titans. And I think the name of the owl is like Boba or something? Boba. But check it out. And then we had ListUpBuy. We had Scott, Scott, StopBuy to do things with code.circupython.org. It was a good show and tell. It was very neat. And then on Saturday or Sunday, depending on what we're doing now, because the weekends are pretty jammed with everything that we've been up to lately, we do Desk of Lady Aida. So the first half this week was? Showing off this ESP32 S2 QT Pi that we designed. We got prototype PCBs actually a while ago. Finally sat down, decapped a S2 mini module so I could get the delicious chip from the inside. And put together some prototypes. And the board worked. So that's really great. We also visited somebody from in the hospital or something in rehab. Yeah. And shut off just prints. We did that. And then we did the great search. What was the great search this week? Great search this week was UFL connectors because there's a UFL connector on one version of that board. And I was like, oh yeah, people often want to add UFL connectors. They're very inexpensive and easy way to add a RF connector without a lot of space. And they're cheap. They're like 20 cents a piece. Okay. So this weekend we're probably going to do Desk of Lady Aida on Saturday again. So tune in. It'll probably be early evening. Someday we're going to go take a trip. JP's product pick of the week this week. This is the only show that I know of in the electronics world at least that broadcasts live from the product page and the discounts are automatically applied. So you can tune into JP show every single Tuesday. Here is the highlight of this week's JP's product pick. Stemma speaker. It is a speaker and amplifier that's super easy plug and play. You can add it to a ton of different microcontroller boards and projects that need a little amp and a speaker. I've got it hooked up right now using one of our Stemma to alligator clip cable assemblies. And I have it hooked up to a circuit playground blue fruit. And I'm running the signal over this audio pin here, which on this one is actually PWM, but you can use it with boards that have a DAC as well. And what I've got are a couple of buttons here that'll give us some sounds. And so you can see you get quite a big difference by having that pressed against something, which is how these little speakers are meant to be used. The Stemma speaker breakout board with amplifier. Cool. And don't forget on Thursday, JP's workshop is happening. And here's a little bit of a treat. You're going to see one of the things that JP's going to show tomorrow. And on Friday, tune into Scott show. Scott's deep dive from what I understand. Scott might be showing the behind the scenes of authoring on the learn system that we have a data fruit. And he's going to show how to make your own circuit Python on bare metal, Raspberry Pi. And he'll show the guide as he's doing this. So I think that'll be kind of cool. Cool. All right. Time travel. Let's turn back the clock, Lady Aida. All the way. And see what's going on. All the way back to, oh, I don't know, yesterday. Yesterday was so far away. So yesterday was Tuesday. And yes, there's Black Friday. Yes, there's sales over the weekend. And yes, there's Cyber Monday. But my favorite thing during this time is giving Tuesday. And so giving Tuesday is when you can donate to a cause, donate your time to a cause. Adafruit does paid days off for charity. We do five paid days off for charity. That means any 5013C that anyone wants to donate their time to, they can. We might even add more next year. And what we did this year is we said, hey, Adafruit team, what are all the different charities, groups, things? We asked some folks in the community and more. And so I just wanted to go over a few of them. And we took over our blog. Blog turned into a place where people can find causes that are maybe interesting to them and they can be part of. So this is Feeding NYC. This is one of the ones that Lady Aida and I did. We went and we did kits and shipping. And feeds about 8,500 homeless families in New York City and the five boroughs. Here's Lady Aida breaking down some boxes. Here's the turkeys getting shipped off. And you could check them out. They do it every single year. They've been doing it for 20 years. It's one of the ones that we like to do. Here is Giving Tuesday, the My Vote project. Here is NYC Warn. This one is a nonprofit tackling acceleration crisis posed by climate change. This one is VocalNYC, another voting rights group. This one, this one hit the heart. Giving Tuesday and tandem bikes. So they team up people with sight to be in the first seat in the tandem bike. And they team up another person who doesn't have sight. And they get pedaled around and they get to ride a bike. That's fun. And they pedaled to another thing. It's beautiful. And some of our team members do it. This is amazing. So I'm not going to go through all of them because there's like 80 something. Our team is really active in participating in their communities. But it just goes on and on and on. And there's so many good charities and there's so many good groups that need your help. You can do stuff online. We have some tech ones like the Tor project. Hack the Hood. That's in San Francisco. Rise up. Lots of online safety and privacy. EFF protecting your digital rights online. Kids in tech. Public knowledge. We have archive.org. We've got OSI. We got ASHA. We got black girls code. We've got you name it. It's there. And then we went to an art exhibit not too long ago. And they're in there too. And so we put we put everyone in there. So do check it out. And you know if you've been working from home and things are going good for you and you're like, well, you know, huh. Maybe you could spend a couple of bucks or a couple of hours and help someone else out. Just to be straight up. But I don't mind telling some, you know, personal stories once in a while. I don't know what other people do to get rid of the pain. Maybe you do drugs or alcohol or maybe you do other things. None of those things. Yeah, you do electronics. None of those things work for me. The only thing that seems to work is helping others. It does seem to take the pain away. So I could tell you if you're going through something, help others. It feels good. The more you give, the more you get. Next up, Adafruit IO. So this is a big one. Whippersnapper is releasing new features constantly. So you know all about this one. What is this new thing that's out now? Okay. We have pushed into production support, the beginnings of support for I squared C sensors. So this is the thing that really differentiates Whippersnapper from other like no-code IoT setups because it will automatically let you set up I squared C sensors, not just analog inputs and digital inputs. So starting with the HT20, which is very low cost, but very common I squared C temperature humidity sensor. If you wire this up to a Whippersnapper supported board's I squared C port, it'll be able to scan the I squared C address and detect that this was found. And then you can enable temperature and humidity feeds that will automatically get sent. So you don't have to write any code or configuration. It'll automatically set up the device for you. And this is the first I squared C device, and yes, we'll be adding more I squared C devices, but we wanted to start with one, get that going really well, and then fix any bugs, and then we're going to add more sensors. We're also looking for a way to dynamically add sensors so that other people want to add support for or custom sensors and devices can add them. But what I'd really love to do is have our feather boards, people can plug in any I squared C sensor and device and just automatically get temperatures, humidity, air quality, GPS data, automatically updating wirelessly. So it's step one of a very long journey. Okay. And we have a short video. I think we played it before. I'm going to play it again because it's the IO video that you were working on at the time. So I'm going to play that and then we're going to see on the other side in just a second. Lady, what is this? I'm testing out some new Whippersnapper features. So this is a Funhouse board. It's an ESP32 S2. And it's got an HT20 temperature and humidity sensor down here. And up here on Whippersnapper, this is the beta. So this is private, but we'll release soon. If you go all the way to the right here, I can add a new component. And the new component is an HT20 sensor. And it does an iSquared-C scan and detects the address. And then I can set it up to send data every 30 seconds. Create the component. And boom, I've got two new feeds with humidity and temperature data coming in automatically. No code iSquared-C sensor data from your dev board to Adafruit IO. OK. And next up, we have our Internet of Things monthly newsletter. Brandon's team have been doing a great job with this. So in case you missed it, we have the follow-up post, which has all of the things in it. So IoT projects that you may want to do. Wow, that scrolled fast. OK. You know, I've been working on my scroll muscle. IoT projects automated morning coffee routine, putting a Wi-Fi router into a iPhone wall charger, how to get iOS. IoT project quickly off the ground, integrating plot watering into an existing home automation system, extracting data from a smart scale, Pogo pin lock and key with MQTT, connecting a robot cat to the Internet, IoT news and more, building an IoT product from production feedback loop. The ESP32-HT recognizes a thread certified component and a ZigBee compliant platform. No battery, no problem. The future of Internet of Things. And then we have some of the things that Adafruit is up to, including Adafruit IO, the IO platform for everyone. It's our IoT stuff. A little bit of reminder, go to adabox.com. We are shipping winter edition. And we're doing that probably in January, February-ish. You could give the gift that keeps on giving. Get it, Adabox. We're going to run out, so do it now. And we'll be shipping months. Yep. It's time for some Python on hardware. Blink-blink-blink, okay. So, Lady Adab, we have cooperative multitasking in CircuitPython 7 now. It's in beta. You want to kind of explain that a little bit? Yeah, it's the Python, traditionally when we run CircuitPython code, or even Python code in general, you're writing all your code in one big program that everything executes one instruction at a time and it's the next instruction in the list. And that's great for a lot of projects, but as people are doing more complicated hardware, they might want to have things that are on timers or interrupting a task to check on something else. Like you have neopixels that are displaying a pattern and you want to read buttons that then change the pattern. And doing some of that stuff, usually you would use stuff like threads or multitasking, you know, having multiple threads of execution that share some data or control. And there's a couple different ways to do this in CPython, but folks have pretty much settled on using async and async.io as well as like helper libraries. And this has been supported in MicroPython people for a while, but asking us like, hey, why don't you support it in CircuitPython? But we want to take a couple tweaks to it to make it more CPython compatible. So it's the code that you write for CircuitPython will run on a Raspberry Pi or desktop computers and it's much more cross-platform in that way. But we've started writing guides and implementing support in 7.1.0 beta. We had some earlier support, but we changed it around enough that really you should just start from scratch if you've written async.io code for CircuitPython before. And we're working with MicroPython to like collaborate and make libraries that help make async.io easier for people together that'll run on both platforms because again, it's a CPythonism. It's not unique to MicroPython or CircuitPython. But basically, you want multitasking, we got it. And there's also a fact in there about what other stuff we're going to support and what stuff we're not going to support and why we're not supporting it because there's good reasons. It's like, we always say, sometimes it's more important what you don't do than what you do do. Yeah, especially with threading and multitasking, having written thread code in Python for decade plus now, there's definitely things that Python used to do that they're like, please don't do this anymore because it just doesn't really work very well. And people, the joke is you put yourself in the shot because you can't do things in the right order. All right, next up, if you want to be assured to have your project on Adafruit, just do something like this. This is the Dune pain box. The Gomdibar from Dune with a Raspberry Pi. They made a video and it has, like you put your hand in it and it tells you about the pain. It's the recreation of the Gomdibar scenes from the Dune, the 1984, I don't know if they have a lunch one, but let me see here. Yeah, and they show it. As you put your hand in it, it has the same audio. And so I thought that was really cool. And there's kind of like the pain. So I thought this is neat. If you put your hand out, like it sticks to you with the. Well, I think it's not that dangerous. So it's uninstructables and you can find out more and cool project. There's a lot of Dune stuff. We have a Dune prop that we're going to show tonight as well. So that's the highlights from the newsletter. There's a lot going on, but I do have a video or a thing I wanted to show. So I was hoping someone would do this eventually. This is the, the farmer says, and someone's modding it now at Circuit Python. And you can see that the innards are now going to be Circuit Python compatible. So you'll be able to do a bunch of cool stuff with it. So as this project evolves and more fun, we'll show it off. So cool. And you know, that's one of the things. The Circuit Python board shows up as USB drive. So that means you can drag and drop things like MP3s or WAV files. And you can always update the code and always do all sorts of things. And technically that thing's now a USB drive. So, okay. And then a little bit of a sneak peek. We're doing more of Blinka art. So here's some of them. We wanted to do some Blinka Bluetooth, Blinka Bob Ross, Blinka art, and Blinka, you know, just kind of pointing the finger at you. It's like the Spider-Man thing. It's like, you did it. I did it. No, we did it. That's the cooperative multitasking. That's cooperative multitasking. And then game gaming, gaming Blinka. And that's our Python and hardware news this week. Thanks, Blinka. All right. Take it away, Adafruit factory. Adafruit factory footage coming right up. And it wouldn't be New York City factory footage without the Disney headquarters being built across the street. It's so loud now that it's so loud. So we're changing some of the, so we keep windows open for ventilation because we have like amazing great ventilation that also keeps things like, you know, airborne diseases at bay. But it's really noisy. So you have to not open up some of the windows and some of the locations where you have to move where we're opening up. But anyways, that's New York City factory footage. It's so loud. All right, 3D printing time. All right. I'm going to pay to draw back. Okay, so we got two things. We're, yeah, we're going to show their project and then we're going to show a speedup and then we're going to show you the speedup in person. So stick around. See you on the other side. Hey, what's up, folks? In this project, we're making a 3D printed menorah. We designed a 3D printed menorah that lights up with Neopixel LEDs. We came up with a minimalistic design with parts that snap fit together and print without any supports. We wanted to make the assembly modular so it's easy for folks to put together. A button lets you light up a Neopixel on each night of Hanukkah. The Shemash stays lit and on the first night, the Neopixel on the far right is lit. The bulbs are printed in translucent PLA and the Neopixels are fitted inside these little holders. The bulbs are hollowed to better diffuse the LEDs so they illuminate nicely. The Neopixels are chained together using MULIX cables so they can easily be connected. The wires are housed inside the base with top and bottom covers that snap fit. This project is powered by the 80-feet QTiPi RP2040 running Circuit Python. The QTiPi is secured to the bottom cover and just snap fits into the built-in holder. The bottom has a cutout so you have access to the USB-C port. It can be powered by a 5V USB supply from either a computer or wall outlet. We have the QTiPi RP2040 running Circuit Python with the LED animation library. When the button is pressed, the next pixel is lit up in sequence and the center pixel is skipped. The pixel map helper in the LED animation library allows you to light up each pixel one by one. With quick iterations and the USB drive, Circuit Python is the best way to get your projects going. I designed the Minora in Fusion 360 and made it parametric so it's easy to modify the dimensions. It's fairly modular and a nice starting point for folks who want to add more features. The design source is free to download and links to the files are down in the description. The nine holders feature threads on the bottom and screw right into the top cover. The new pixels are fitted through the top with the wiring going through the holders. Cables are connected with the data flowing from one LED to the next one in line. Be sure to check out the learn guide for full step by step tutorial on building this project. I had a great time building this and hope this inspires you to check out the QT Pi, RP2040 and Circuit Python. Thanks for watching and be sure to subscribe for more projects from Adafruit. Let's go to the overhead and show this off. Yeah, I feel like you could... If you wanted the weathering effect, we have guides that talk about weathering. So this is silver, PLA, black PLA, and then translucent. And it's got a really nice effect to it. And it's a little pointy. Yeah, and then show these two off next to each other. So that's the replica one. This is the replica. We didn't add any paint. You could put some black paint and then rub it off and you could do all those things. This is not bad. Yeah, this is really nice. For a prop. For a prop. So no sandworms were hurt in the making of these. At least I don't think so. But when you look at these... No fight? No. I'll use my mind. So that's the... Give me your water. Yeah. There's a really good scene in the new dune where they got to get off the planet and they're not going to still guard. And they're like, hey, like we could give you all sorts of stuff. And he's like, what wolf could you possibly give me other than the water in your flesh? So when anyone asks us what our exit strategy is again, we're just going to start staying now. We're like the water in your flesh. Yeah. And we'll just walk around with these. Give it to me. Yeah. Okay. So let's keep moving along, lady. You know what it's time for? No. Iron MPI. On MPI. This week's Iron MPI, brought to you by DigiKey and Ada Fruit, is from Blue's Wireless. Lady Eda, what is this week's Iron MPI? Oh, okay. So this week's Iron MPI is from Blue's Wireless. They're kind of a... They're not super new, but they're a couple of year old, I think, cellular service and hardware company. You know, it's basically make IOT really easy. Right now they're focusing on cellular. And so I saw their note cards and note card carriers pop up on digikey.com slash new. So check this out. So, you know, they're two products, but we'll talk about the note cards first. So the note card is an M.2 key plug-in card. And each card kind of has everything you need to, you know, get going with the cellular system. As you can see, it's got UFL antenna connectors. It's got an embedded SIM with pre-provisioned AT&T network connectivity. Voltage regulators and managers is an onboard Cortex-M4. There's a ST-SAFE, so there's like a key hardened private key holding device for secure authentication. You'll need that if you want to connect to like AWS and stuff securely. And there's accelerometer and temperature sensor. So that's good for asset management. If you want something's been moved or the temperature's changed on the back and I'll show these modules on the overhead later. There's a cellular module and there's a different Quaktel modules on each side. And, you know, basically when you purchase the card, you're purchasing service as well. That's sort of the deal here. Each one comes with a 10-year connectivity and 500 megabytes of data. Of course, you can purchase more data and more time. Everything is SSL and secured over the cellular network. And they have a three different... Well, they actually have multiple networks but they support LTE-M, NBIOT, or CAT1. And we'll talk about that in a bit why you might want one or the other. And the idea here is you just have four different cards. Each card has a slightly different amount of support. You plug it into your dev board or their dev board and then you connect to their cloud. And the cloud, you know, redirects the data from your device into AWS or onto your cloud app. Everything's done with JSON data. So, you know, I guess underneath you can do HTTP or you can do maybe SOAP, sorry, Co-App or MQTT. And, you know, 500 megabytes which is what it comes with. You know, it's not a lot of data if you have a data plan but if you're, you know, transmitting temperature data or motion activity or GPS and stuff, 500 megabytes will last you quite a while. That said, you can always get more. I saw one really funny comment on YouTube. Somebody said, I want more data. And somebody said, and somebody from Blue said, how much? And they said 501 megabytes. So, yes, you can buy more megabytes but the idea here is that when you get it, you don't have to like do separate provisioning. It's a kind of pre-provisioned for you. And I saw something interesting because these are both PTCRB and you don't need to, you know, the end customer like you do with SIM cards because it's only IoT. It's not voice or SMS. It's only this NB IoT or CAT 1M. You don't need to have identifying information about the end user. They can pre-provision it on the cellular network with AT&T, which is quite nice. It's one of the steps that's annoying about doing cellulars. You have to go and register and get a SIM card. So, there's four different modules and you can see here there's Global, North America, Narrowband, Wideband. You know, which one you get? First off, depends on the coverage. And we'll talk about that but also how much data you want to pass. So, Narrowband, of course, is going to be like NB IoT is you can look at the bit rates. I don't know them off the top of my head but you're going to get much lower bit rates with NB IoT versus LTE CAT 1. LTE CAT 1 can like transmit a fair amount of data but you might have to pay more and also you may not be able to get like global coverage. So, you can see like the NB IoT you know, a module. There's one module that can run anywhere in the world using the Quectel BG95M3 but there's no such thing as like a global module for CAT 1. LTE CAT 1, you have to choose either it's going to be Europe, Middle East of Africa or North America. This is, you know, part of the cellular networks. If you've ever done stuff with cellular, you'll know that not every country has coverage for every type of network especially since a lot of them are being shut down or being transitioned and those are all happening at different rates. So, this is more information about the cellular service. It's AT&T underneath. So, you know, you'll have to depending on where your product or device is going to be deployed are you keeping it North America? Are you watching this from Europe? Are you in Australia? Are you in Japan? It will differ about, you know, what is the remote network that's being handed off to do the wireless network? I basically say like they're kind of focusing right now on North America. If you're outside North America I'd probably contact them and say like, hey, you know, the majority of my customers or clients are in this country. What card do you recommend I do for this bit rate? And they'll probably be able to help you out. So, I did, you know, want to say like, because some people say like, well, why LTE and why is it not 4G and why is it, you know, some of them do GPRS. This is the Verizon network maps because they have this kind of cute little clicky click thing. So, this is not the AT&T map. This is just a demonstrative of the kind of stuff you'll want to look into. So, LTE M has like this coverage in North America and then if you click over to NBIOT you'll see Canada isn't covered but the United States is. There's, you know, NBIOT has been rolled out over the U.S. a lot more but it's not like rolled out almost anywhere else in the world. Whereas GPRS and GSM you see is like non-existent in North America and this is, we found it's true. Like T-Mobile still has some GPRS sort of networks but almost all that bandwidth has been transferred over to LTE networks. Everyone's been moving off of to G except you'll see there if you're in Mexico you still have to G. So, again, you gotta research where are you gonna use these modules to determine and then, you know, again looking over at Europe again this is the AT&T map or this is the Verizon map not the AT&T map but Verizon doesn't, it has GPRS and GSM so you see all that yellow and orange but there is no NBIOT or at least not, you know, not enough visible on this map. So, eventually everything will have NBIOT support but it's coming slowly and slowly as LTE is rolling out. Okay. So, the reason we talk about this is because one of the things that's really annoying about cellular and I know this about cellular is that networks are constantly being brought up and taken down. So, you know, 10 years ago we like launched a whole bunch of 2G modules and then, you know, now they're like pretty much useless and even 3G modules are starting to get sunsetted. So, what I liked about the Luzuaro's modules is they have this M2 plugin module and you can get the connectors from DigiKey for like under a dollar. We even have a great search about this and you can see they have them in stocks. You don't have to worry about silicon shortages and then you plug in whatever module you need. So, if you have a product that you're like, I have European customers, Japanese customers, Australian, you know, Northern African, Southern African, Mexican, Canadian, whatever, each one of them you can plug in the module that makes sense for that customer base and if the networks change over time because 2G will eventually get shut down worldwide, you can change it out pretty easily. It's even like user serviceable. Like I, you know, and no one necessarily have like the end-to-end customer do it, but a technician with very little skill could go in. Screwdriver. Screwdriver, pop it out, put it back in. You can't put it in backwards. So, I think that that's kind of this kind of the smartness that they're bringing here is the realization that these networks are going to constantly be updating and changing. They also have a lot of code examples. So, do check out the GitHub they've got like a getting started guide. They kind of promise within 30 minutes you'll get up and running. And with the note cards is the note carrier series. So, there's four different note carriers, four different note cars and note carriers, mix and match, right? Whichever one fits into whichever. Here are two battery powered ones and developer ones. They also have, ooh, it's a feather one. That's quite nice. Thank you. There's a feather carrier and there's a Raspberry Pi hat carrier. I also like that they have an iSquared C connector on there and it's, I think, grove compatible. But we have a grove 2-stemma and quick adapter cable. So, if you want to use our sensors with this to add humidity sensing, for example. You can do that best of all. All of these things are in stock in DigiKey. Yes, all of them are in stock, which is pretty amazing. Considering it uses both the silo module and an STM chip, two things which are extremely hard to get. Nowadays. But they were able to get some inventory and you can buy these. Right now, they're actually in stock. We have the short URL and the DigiKey search there, but you can search for lose wireless. And do you want to show it off? And then we're going to play a video. The video is about three minutes long. That's a good video. So, yeah, it's worth it. Okay, so let's go. So let's show it on the overhead. So I'll say I didn't get the feather carrier. I probably should have, but I didn't realize. Collect them all. Yeah, I was not paying attention. So this is the carrier module, the per typing, and then this is the module and this is what one of them looks like. So this one, I think this is the NBIOT Global, I think NBGL, that's probably what it means. And then this is the module on the back and you can see this. Oh, I screwed this on. And then I forgot to bring an Allen wrench. Hold on. You have it on the whiteboard at home. I know. Hold on. Yeah. This is what we call dead air in the base. No, no, I can unscrew it by hand. It's just a... Lady that has a Allen wrench shape nail. Yes. So you, so yeah, you basically can easily disconnect the UFLs and then plug in the module you want. And then these modules are what you would use in your end product as well. So this is really great for prototyping because you get the exact same hardware that you'd use in your final design. And I like it's got battery, it's got solar, it's got all the antennas. And you know, even though you might want larger antennas, you can always connect them over UFL. They do have some simple built-in ones so you can get started immediately. And then USB for quick commands and headers for plugging in other sensors. So very nice. Oh, and then I forgot to mention these also have GPS GNSS support as well, which is quite common. You can also do location based off of cellular triangulation, but GPS is of course going to get you better precision and accuracy. Okay. And we're going to play the video. It's really good. We'll see you on the other side. Take it away. IonMPI. And then we're going to bounce into the next segment after that. Cellular is the most ubiquitous, stable and secure method for adding connectivity to devices. For developers, it's also the most expensive and complex. Cellular modems still use communication patterns from the dial-up days. Dev kits try to abstract away those old patterns, but sadly with narrow guardrails by dictating the MCU, RTOS, language and IDE that you have to use. And when it comes to cost, most cellular IoT devices include monthly fees and data plans that you are responsible for, regardless of whether or not the device is even in use. At Blue's Wireless, we aim to change that and make wireless IoT as developer-friendly and accessible as Wi-Fi. And it starts with the note card. The note card is a device-to-cloud data pump that's ready to embed into new and existing applications. It includes a powerful cellular and GPS module, an embedded SIM, and an onboard secure element with keys and certificates added at the point of manufacture. The note card is a deceptively simple cellular IoT device with no fees that just works when you power it on. Ten years and 500 megs of data are included in the cost of the device and devices start at $49. You'll never get a monthly bill for cellular usage. Compared to other solutions, the note card is up to 10 times less expensive over the lifetime of the device. When it comes to sending and receiving data, the note card is a data pipe for your projects. Your MCU sends simple JSON requests and receives JSON responses. You don't need to issue AT commands to turn on the radio, send data, receive data, or anything. The powerful features of the note card are wrapped up in a JSON-based API that is simple and flexible. Finally, the note card works with any host device from powerful single-board computers to 8-bit microcontrollers, meaning that you can get started with your favorite development board and programming language. It's an easy-to-program module without unnecessary guardrails. IoT solutions may start with sensors, actuators, and hardware, but they don't end there. In the Blue's wireless ecosystem, notehub.io is your secure conduit for device-to-cloud connectivity with the note card. Notehub.io facilitates the flow of JSON data from your MCU to your cloud application. With built-in integrations to major cloud providers, support for HTTP and MQTT endpoints, and a JSON-based data transformation capability, the note card and note hub create a JSON data pipe that allows you to forget about the complexities of getting device data to the cloud. With a note card and notehub.io, cellular IoT is finally developer-ready. See for yourself today at blues.io and start building your IoT solutions with no strings attached. You wanted to hold up something? I just wanted to say it was my mistake. There was an Allen wrench actually included in the packaging which was underneath, and I didn't notice it. But you were resourceful. It was a good test. It was there all this time. And, uh, yeah. All right. Thank you. It's hard. All right. On IPA. Yeah. Okay. So, uh, we're going to do new products in just a second. Kintsugi is the code. Hello, all my damaged beautiful people out there. This is for us. This is us. That's what the code's for. But, you know, these things that happen can end up being something wonderful. Here we go, lady. Are you ready? Mm-hmm. I was singing today when I was working, and Lady did call. She said I was an owl. She said I was like an owl. That's a cute owl. So, uh, let's kick it off. What do we got first? Okay. First up, we've got two by 10-pin IDC cables. These are useful for, like, JTAG debugging, but also there's, like, boards once in a while that have IDC connectors on them. We already stuck a couple different sizes, but I don't remember why, but I decided that these would be handy to stock as well. So, uh, good job me. I don't remember. Probably JTAG debugging. If you want to extend your J-Link out and then use and adapt on the other side. Next up. Next up, I really like these bent metal, kind of, like, heavy-duty rework station. This is great for hot air, but also soldering in general. So, it's got this metal plate, and it's a little bit thick, and then there's these magnetic posts that come with it, and the metal posts unscrew, and then you can, you know, attach your PCB on it securely, and then there's two alligator clips as well. So, let me show how it works. We're gonna get the thing here. I like that we have to sort through the dune crisp knives to get to the new products. This is kind of a dream. Okay. So, each PCB here comes with one of these little magnetic feetsy things. So, this unscrews, and then inside there's a little, like, a spacer to do that. And then the PCB slides into the spacer, and then you screw down the thumb screw. And when you do that, it secures, sorry, go, secures that, and then we do the other side. So, they give you four, but you don't need all four. You can, you know, secure it down with two. And now, this is nice and solid, and it's lifted off the board so that if you have a double-sided board or you have, you know, something on the bottom, you don't want to overheat, but you can solder and rework it and adjust it and move it all on this nice metal base, and then there's also a little, like, alligator clippy-type things, and they even put the protectors on the alligator clip ends, which I really like. So, it's a nice little workstation. It's very compact, but I like how flexible it is. You can do any size board. Okay, next up, let's go to a wide assortment of tiny microSD cards, and you're going to ask, why would I need these, but the lady is going to tell you. So, these are exactly, there's microSD cards in small sizes, like 64 megabytes, like 256 megabytes, like 512 megabytes, and then last week, we put in the 128. You're going to need these, trust me. Okay, so the thing about these is they're actually just plain SD, so not SDHC or SDXC, which is really good when you're dealing with old devices. If you have an old device and you're like, I plugged in a microSD card in, doesn't recognize it, because the microSD card is too large, or the microSD cards these days act kind of funky. These cards are, they're very basic and they're very plain, and we love them for that. There's nothing funky or special going on. They're just class four. They have small capacities, but they're also inexpensive, and if you're doing a lot of data loggers and you need 50 SD cards, you don't need a lot of space. It can add up if you're using 8 or 16 gigabyte cards. You know, basically the price of SD cards stays the same but the capacity increases. So we wanted to find ones that really were only a couple of dollars. And so we got a range from 512 down to 64 megabytes. Very handy. I already had a couple of people contact us and say this was great for reviving some old technology that wasn't happy with the new SDXC cards. Yeah, and you know, you can get the adapter, put it in, and then now you're back in business. Also, if you're doing microcontrollers like we are and there's an SD card slot, you know, we want to be able to get some of these things out and have a pretty good price point. So a 64 megabyte card might be all you need next up. We've got this cool keyboard case that also is a perfect case for a Pi 400. It's what we got it for, but it was also probably good for your 60 percent cards. So the case is kind of like a hard case. It's padded. It's got like a nice little handle. It's like a Nintendo Switch case. It's cool. It's a little Nintendo Switch case. And it's like perfect for your Pi 400. We recommend putting it face down because there's like these little nubbins on the bottom that will protect the keys. And then there's a pocket that you can fit stuff in like, you know, a mouse or an HDMI cable. You can fit the USB power supply cable that comes with the Pi 400 kit. I will say just like you have to arrange it in a way so it's like the pointy end doesn't go against the thicker part of the Pi 400. And that way you can actually close the case. It's just a little bit of a tight fit, but it does fit. And, okay. You want to shut off? Yeah, I got to come over here. You can see the images. Okay, so it zips closed. It's quite nice. And then here's what it looks like open. And here's another way of putting it. But if you fit it this way, just be careful if you have like the power supply. Okay. What's that? I thought I would just actually hold it up because it's quite large. So it's like this. And then yeah, we have it with the power supply. But of course, if you don't need a power supply, it folds up much, much nicer. And yeah, if you have keyboards, you can use it for keyboards too. But we got it specifically for the Pi 400. Keyboards, keys, and soon, keyboards. Yeah, it's keyboards. And then it's a nice hard case. So it's not like hard hard, but it's firm. It's not soft. So you can definitely put this in a backpack or luggage or whatever. Take it outside. And while it's not like waterproof, like if you dunk it under water, there's a little bit of a gap in the zipper. But I'll definitely keep it from getting dirty. So good for students, I think, if they're carrying the Pi 400s to and from workshops or classes, or if you just want to have a safe place to keep it. Get the accessory. I think that's really cool. And to start the show tonight, besides you, Lady Data, besides our team here at Data Fruit, our community, our customers, by the way, there's lots of great folks from Minnesota here tonight. You lived in Minnesota for a while. Just for like a summer. I lived there a long time. And there's a bunch of people. I think we have some mutual acquaintances and more. Our CFOs from Minnesota, there's all sorts of good things in Minnesota. Anyways, Minnesota is also the start of the show. But the thing that folks should consider, and this is why I'm doing it this week, is an Adafruit gift certificate. So get them an Adafruit gift certificate because it is the best gift certificate. It never expires. We don't market to you. We don't harvest your emails. We don't spam the person who's going to get it. We don't do anything like that. All it is is a gift certificate and they can use it forever at the Adafruit store because there's going to be some stuff that's in stock and some stuff that's not in stock. So stock up on gift certificates. Yeah. You can get a limit of them. They're virtual. And we have a really nice graphic you can print out and more. And that is this week's New Products. Thank you. New. Okay. So there's some questions lined up. I'm going to get to those, but we're going to do some top secret. We're just going to go to it right away. Yes. Top secret. It's in the vault. It's like Mission Impossible. That's all sorts of stuff. There's a caper. Capers are tasty. Okay. Put your question in the chat. Put it in the Discord chat. So I'm going to play two videos. These are the ESP32 as to mini QT files. And then we're going to talk about some things. And then I'm going to... Then we're going to do the questions. Ready? Yep. Related. What is this? Hey, it's late night, turkey day. And I thought I would digest some of that delicious yams that I ate and work on a new QT pie. So you all know the QT pie, Samdi 21 and then the QT pie, RP2040. Right. So what's the next thing? It's a QT pie with an ESP32 S2 on the back. And this has two megabytes of PS4 and four megabytes of flash built in. You got a neopixel antenna. Got the design going on. And I'm going to bring this up and do the circuit python definition. Don't forget, we've got, oh, photo Friday happening. Pick up feathers from the store and get big discounts. And if you order $99 or more, you get a free pink Adafruit Feather RP2040. Oh, it's so pink. So I'll post up more updates on this QT pie, ESP, coming soon. Really? What is this? Hey, I am testing out prototypes for the ESP32 S2 QT pie. This is a little compatible for our RP2040 version and our Samdi 21 version. Got the swapped. And what I'm doing right now is doing Wi-Fi tests where I'm taking the Adafruit IO and I'm publishing temperature and humidity from this stomach QT connected temperature and humidity sensor. And you can see here's the code. It's in circuit python. And here's the dashboards. We've got the humidity and temperature. And then if I change this, say, to red, you'll see that the LED on here changes to red too. All good stuff. So far, so good. I'm going to do a couple more changes. Don't forget, all this weekend, we've got Black Friday and Feather, sorry, Black Friday, Feather Friday. Give away $99 or more. You get a free pink RP2040 feather. Look at how cool that is. Anytime you order from Adafruit, $99 or more. Okay. And so we had some photos of it because it's so tiny, so cute. And then we also posted up the pins for it, the schematic. I think this was as you were working on it, right? Yeah. And then we also have this nice silk. And then you gave me something to post up also. I made a little TFT breakout for this cute little TFT coming out soon. And that's the back of it. And that's top secret. Yeah. Okay. So we're going to do, we're just going to roll right into questions. Let's do some questions. Okay. You got questions. We got answers. That was the old Radio Shack slogan. When, speaking of my time in Minneapolis, we were working, I've worked with multiple iterations of Radio Shack at Make Magazine and then also when I was at Fallon. I mean, that's the only measure time now. How many new owners of Radio Shack is there? Okay. Let's do the questions right now, Lady Aida. So the first one is, someone has an RP20 SparkFun one. How do you unbrick it? I'm sorry? So they have a SparkFun RP2040 board and they can brick it. Oh, RP2040s can't be bricked. The boot loader's in ROM. So just hold down the boot button or whatever it's called while you plug it into USB and then let go of the boot buttons and it'll pop up with the boot loader. Okay, question. I have a Pimeroni Pico Lipo RP2040. I put Circuit Python on it around 7 beta. I somehow hose it so I can't get it to turn on anymore. Any ideas how I might troubleshoot it or should I write it off? If it doesn't turn on anymore, that's, you know, you probably, something could have gotten damaged with the power supply. But if the power supply still is working, then if it's a RP2040, yeah, just hold down the boot button while you plug into USB and then the boot loader will show up and then you can reload code onto it. Okay, I'll answer this one question. If you had an Amazon store, would, for people in Europe, not be easier to buy without extra import tax? Thanks. So go to Adafruit.com slash distributors and you can look at the thousands of distributors and you can also do things like get it from, did you key? You can get it from Mauser. They have European offices, European distribution, European stuff and more. And then we also shop local, probably somewhere in Europe, there is an Adafruit distributor. We have thousands of them. Okay, next up, I'm an undergrad in electronics. How do I become a good engineer? Lots of practice. You just make a lot of mistakes and then you learn engineering practice. Engineering is a practice-based skill. So the more you do it, the better you get. Some folks like the PTO for volunteer services, yeah, you know, if you work at a company, I'll just give you some advice. If you run the company, just do it. If you work there, talk to the team, usually they're called HR and just say, hey, what would it take for us to do something like this? Put it on them, just say, hey. And then if they say, oh, we would need more information and be like, oh, I know this company in New York and I'll send you our little policy thing. It's worked out great. Next up. Oh yeah, Iowa's fine too, but there's just a lot of people in Minnesota right now. Look, this is how it is some nights. Some nights, it's the Minnesota night. It's the Minnesota night. Yeah. It's not just 49 other states. Yeah, it's not, we're not, you know, we're not picking any of them. Project question. I'm considering running a Flex PCB for a prototype. Have you had any good experience with PCB houses that offer affordable-ish Flexboards or any advice? I think Oshbark has a Flex service, so I would try them first. They'll definitely get you the best output. Oh wow. Someone in the YouTube chat gave us money and then they asked a question. Thank you. I want to come up with a circuit python device that can monitor the voltage of 16 batteries to the maximum voltage of four volts each. Which board would be best for that many or more inputs? For four volts, the thing is the circuit python boards, you know, they all run on three volts, so you're going to need a voltage divider for all of them. But, you know, I don't know of any boards that have 16 analog inputs. Actually no, the Grant Central has 16 analog inputs. So you could use the Grant Central, which runs circuit python, and then you would need to have resistor dividers for each board because there's no microcontroller that has five volt analog inputs and three volt logic. It doesn't really exist. So you're going to have to use resist dividers on each one, so it's 32 resistors, but after you do that, you should just be able to use the analog inputs on the Grant Central to read your 16 batteries. Okay. Thank you for the nice little donation. That was really nice of you. Yeah, and then for us, good, and again. Okay, can I send you a product to review at your catalog? What you do is email supportedatafruit.com and just provide all that information, and our team takes that and they send it to us, and we take a look at us as a few people, not just the two of us, and we'll probably ask for pricing. We might ask, is there a source code available? Is there schematics? Have you sold it before? One thing I'll ask, once in a while, people will send us like, hey, I have this patented thing and I want you to sign in DAs and do all this stuff. We don't do that. So please don't do that, because we're working on lots of stuff. It would be not good to do that. Next, I think, okay, Scott's hoping out in the huge of Jeff or this other person. Osh Park Flux Service is awesome. That's what folks are saying. I think, I think those are the questions. I think we're here right on time and on budget. Yeah, the person who was, yeah, I literally escaped from Florida. So the person who was talking about Fallon in Minnesota, yeah, I ran away from 16 when I was 16, because like, Florida was not great at the time. Anyways, I'm glad we all, you know what, this is the cool thing about these shows we do. People are, it's like finding someone in the matrix and we're all together doing our thing. I can't wait to see the matrix. It's gonna be so good. I hope this, I hope there's not gonna be an outbreak. I haven't had such a good time going to see Dune. It was such a good time. All right, well that's our show for tonight, everybody. Okay, thanks everybody. Let's do the code. Fill those cracks with gold. Gold. And thank you so much to Kara behind the scenes tonight. I'm looking forward to getting a little bit more time because to Kara and I work on some writing projects soon. And stay safe, everybody. Watch out for the Autobots and Decepticons and Omnicrons that are out there trying to get us. We'll be here next week, same bat time, same bat channel, all those things. This has been an Adafruit production. Thank you so much, everybody. Here is your moment of zener. We'll see you next week. Bye, everybody.