 This week's IonMPI is from Challenge Electronics. Yes. Ladyita, what is IonMPI this week? I'm always excited to have a new company to feature on IonMPI. Not that I don't love the maxims and the analogs and TI's, but I also like to support and promote the smaller companies. And Challenge Electronics, they make, you know, piezos, speakers, boxes, enclosures, battery holders, and stuff, and they're in upstate New York. I know. So this week's IonMPI is their series of waterproof battery holders. And check it out. It even says on it waterproof battery holders. These are IP65 battery holders in a couple of different configurations. So we stock battery holders like this and the Adafruit Shop. You know, a lot of electronics these days are sealed, you know, rectangles with a built-in lipoly battery and charger. And that does make them, you know, usually less expensive, harder to mess up. But it also means it's really hard to change with the batteries. You know, if you're, if you have an old phone and you have to change at the battery, you usually have to go to like a specialty place, or you like put it in the microwave or like the heating thing in the microwave and remove it. But you know, if your product or project uses AA or AAA batteries, it's going to be a lot more field or user replaceable, which could be important. So the leakage on alkaline battery can be a lot lower than a lipoly battery. So there are definitely times, and like lithium batteries work very well in cold temperatures. So there's definitely times when alkaline batteries or, sorry, AA AAA batteries are the way to go. The only problem with these open battery cases is they're inexpensive, but it's easy for dust and moisture to get in. And so this is actually a battery corrosion because the battery is corroded. I found this photo on Flickr, but the idea is similar. You know, water gets in, you've got these contacts, they're metal, there's metal on metal contacts that they get oxidized, they get damp, they get dirty, and then the batteries make bad connectivity. So not good. Also, usually the contacts are another way to get, you know, water into your electronics. So, you know, what if we had a battery case that was more waterproof? So this is the CAB series. They come in two times AAA, two times AA, and three times AA. All of them are IP65. I'll show them on the overhead a little bit, but they've got four screws and they've got red and black cables coming out about six inches or eight inches there. And, you know, to remove the batteries, you unscrew it, but, you know, the whole thing is IP65, so it's nice and durable, good for your dust-proofness or waterproofness. And here is the Ingress Protection Reigns Guide. So one thing to note is that IP65 is dust-proof and good against jets of water, but it is not good for dunking underwater. So this isn't like for your pool, but this would be good for outdoor, you know, something that's in the weather, basically, something that has rain, you know, jets of water coming at it. Let's say you want to make a Laura sensor node and you want to transmit data only once in a while. You want a battery powered off of AAAA, so people can come by every month and replace the batteries. It's user or field replaceable. This would be a really good battery pack because it could be outside, nicely protected, and very easy to open up when you need to access the batteries. Come in multiple sizes and they're all in stock, so you can available on Digikey. Oh my gosh, things are in stock. This is what is the challenge for a lot of things when we want to showcase them on our shows now because one, sometimes they're really popular, not in stock. Sometimes it's our fault. People will say, I really want that. And then they buy them all up. But this time, this is a new company that we're spotlighting. Yes. So let's go to the overhead and I'll show it off really quickly. I just want to show how this is put together. So this is, I have one of each. This is the 2AA and this is a 3AA. So you open it very easily. You just use a Phillips screwdriver to open it up. I like the four screws because it really, I'll show the gasket inside. This makes really good contact. And they're nice stainless steel machine screws as well. And then you can see here, there's this little rubber gasket. So this part has a lip. You can kind of see here. There's this kind of, it's tough to see, it's so small. There is like a little lip here, if you can see that. And actually it's a little easier to see on the bottom. See this little lip here, this little groove. This groove fits into this groove here, which has a rubber bit inside. And it's a solid piece of rubber that goes all the way around. And that's what gives it that protection as long as you screw it down. The lip bites into the rubber and the rubber is what makes the seal. So if you're going to get waterproof stuff or weatherproof stuff, make sure that it has a rubber gasket. It's not enough to just use plastic overlap. That's not water, jet, or dust safe. But these look very well made. Really nice, good contacts. Good spring even says challenge on the inside. And if you need a custom sized one, they think they do their molding here in New York. They can probably hook you up. So quote them. If you need a D-cell or nine volt or maybe you want four times triple A, they can make a custom one for you. OK, and that's this week's IonMPI.