 and welcome to this Gladiator. Hey everybody. Sorry, I'll cut off there. Hi and welcome to my desk. Stuff on me. Oh my goodness, sorry. Having a baby. Okay, so welcome to my desk. It's me, Gladiator, covered with cereal and doing a lot of engineering. It's been so cold out. So we're staying in and doing all sorts of electronics. So let's go to my computer real fast and I'll show off the design. I think I checked about this last week. So this is a board that will take a new pixel signal here. I always like to make it, maybe I'll turn on the T-docus layer cause it always makes it a little more visible. One moment. T-docus. Okay. It takes the new pixel signal from this connector here, puts it through a WS-2811 chip and then through an inverter and then through three power and channel fets into this terminal block that is basically like an open collector connection for power ground and then three channels red, green and blue. And the idea was that I would be able to use this to take a new pixel signal which like a lot of my controllers can now generate and turn that into a three channel RGB PWM output that can handle up to like 12, 16 volts and up to three amps per channel. So we got the prototypes going over here. So let's go to the overhead. I'll show this off. So this is the board. So you see the new pixel signal. Yeah. I pulled it out a little bit. New pixel signal coming here and you can kind of see this little red LED saying, okay, data's coming in, power. And then this is powered from, the signal's coming from this metro which is a five volt Arduino compatible ground and then V in here, this is a 12 volt power input. So I'm getting that to power this board from. And then this is driving a tower device. This is a little tower light. And these are 12 volt LEDs. And so normally these are real pain in the ass to wire up because we need these transistors and resistor pulled out, whatever, blah, blah, blah. But this is actually working beautifully and you can see it's doing like, PWMing between all the different colors. Another demo I did, so this is working great. This is exactly the kind of thing I wanted to do. It's like I have three LEDs of 12 volts and I want to, you know, turn them on and off without a lot of wiring. Another thing you can do, this is a sign for a second, is use it to drive something like this which is a three or five watt LED. This LED takes five volts, not 12 volts. The only thing is, I think, I forgot to reprogram this. This might be only like, it might be like pure white. Yeah, oh my God, it's like the brightest in the world. Let me just update my code real fast to remove the... No, I just was, sorry, it's fine now. I just, it's worked Python, so it's like I just edited it really fast, no compiling. So now you can see this just ridiculously bright LED. You can see it's like so bright, it kind of washes me out. Driven as if it was a neopixel. So like a lot easier than having to connect up power transistors, dealing with like, you know, level shifting or whatever. This is all plug and play and then this is really easy to use. It's just a terminal block that uses little screwdriver. So this design is great. I'm actually like kind of psyched because there's a lot of times where I wanted to use like 12, a lot of stuff is like 12 volts LEDs or really powerful LEDs and now it's easy to connect and then this is the little output pin. So if you want to chain these together, you can have multiple. I want to keep the board small so there isn't like a chain connector but you can mechanically chain them by just grabbing the output signal from here. So that's one prototype that's looking great, psyched to get that out. And then let's show the other prototype is a little bit more detailed. Let me just unplug this because I don't want to have any confusion. So the next prototype I've got is the... Itzy Bitsy ESP32. This is one of those 2020 designs that I'm trying to finally, you know, just wrap it up. Wait a second. Okay, so this is a board with... Show this off. ESP32 Pico module. That's what it's called. I know there's a lot of stuff that's called Pico but this is literally like the name of the module is called the Pico from Expressif and it has eight megabytes of flash, two megabytes of PS RAM and an ESP32, you know, Wi-Fi Bluetooth, Bluetooth Classic module. Which I really like. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that still uses the classic ESP32, you know, can't be beat like vanilla ice cream. Sometimes it's the tastiest flavor. Semicut connector, a little built-in NeoPixel, reset button and a user button, pin 13 LED. And then on the back, the USB serial converter chip that does the programming, little reset circuitry, a couple of nice capacitors for bypass filtering. And then a five-volt output signal. So this is for, if you're driving NeoPixels like with WLED, you really wanna have a level shifted up signal just in case you have LEDs that are sensitive that they really want five-volt peak-to-peak signal. This is a five-volt shifted output. And then diodes to select either VBAT or USB power. So this is kind of the same as the other itsy-bitsy boards we've got, but with the ESP32. Now I kind of wish that I didn't have the antenna, like kind of close to the SPI and UR pins, but that's kind of the standard locations I use for those. And you know, before the ESP32 existed, like I designed those pins. I noticed that, you know, didn't really affect the antenna output, but I'm also gonna make a version with a UFL connector or WFL connector. And that way on the off chance that it's like, no, I really wanna have much better antenna and I don't want it to interfere with the signals. Always have external antenna. It's very easy. I just pick and place a different module on. This is the exact same footprint. So that's the module. And so the test I've been doing to get it started is, you know, this is gonna be great for whippersnapper, I think, because it's so small. And then I just have it hooked up here to a temperature humidity sensor. And then I just have this little OLED connected, which is saying the temperature humidity and it connected to IO. And then if we go to the computer, I have just a really quick dashboard showing the output. And then you can see the connectivity dots over here. And then if I set this color to be like purple, if you go back to the overhead, you know, now this LED is purple. So it's kind of hard to see. Let me see if I can find something I can reflect it off of. Maybe this tissue. Okay, so this is like purple. And then I'll set it to be red. And then it's red. And then I'll set it to be green. And then it's green. Okay, great. So you know, like, you know, internet connectivity back and forth is working quite well. So that's the demo I did. So the only thing is after I did the demo, I was like, great, all I have to do now is do the low power tests. But then when I did the low power tests, the amount of current being drawn was like 150 micro ampere, which is really, it's not high, 150, but it should be more like, it should be 50 or less because the way I wired everything up, I was like, well, the NeoPixel's on a pin to power it. And I didn't have anything connected to the I squared C and the, you know, when it's off battery that USB chip isn't running. And so I actually tried, you know, I grabbed a bunch of these because I had a couple of prototypes and I kind of started piecing together what happened. So the first thing is, find it. Sorry, there's like, there's so many damp words on my desk. Okay. So the first thing I did is I realized that this level shifter is floating. So let's go to the computer and I'll show what I mean by that. So this is a fixed version, but I'll show you what it is. So this is the level shifter that we were taking signal in D5 and I was shifting it up the five volts. And when you're running off a battery, V high is powered. V high is basically the diode or of, show you the diode or of power from the bus USB or from the battery. And so what's happening is that this was, when you have a floating input to a gate, it's sometimes like causes extra current or it can like flicker up and down because it's floating. So I added a very like pull down and like that reduced the amount of current already, like, you know, like I think 20, 30 micro amperes or something. So that was step one, so that got added. And then the next thing I realized was that I had used MBR 120s for these diodes. And so when the battery was powered, actually the MBR 120s, which I use for some cases have kind of high back leakage. Like they could be up to like half a milliamp. And so the VBAT power was going through here and that was correct, but then it was leaking back current into V bus and powering things like the USB converter chip. What else was it powering? I think it was like, I don't know. It was like back powering something else. I think maybe it was just the USB serial converter chip because this should have been off. This should be only powered from V bus. So maybe it was powering this resistor divider here that's used for V bus detect. And so I swapped the MBR 120s for BAT 20Js. It's kind of like looked around. So BAT 20Js, three amp continuous current. I think like maybe five amp, maybe two amp continuous current, like four amp peak. And not too bad for a drop like 500 milliamps, about the same as the MBR 120, but much, much smaller reverse current. I see, I think I'll look it up real fast, BAT 20J. And like tons of them in stock. So maybe one amp, sorry. Sorry, it's continuous one amp, which is fine, just plenty. And then reverse current, it depends a little bit about like temperature and VR, but it's low, like in the under microamp on average for like, you know, five volts and 25 degrees C. And you know, the forward voltage isn't too bad. I mean, it's a little higher than the MBR 120, but it's like only a hundred millivolts more. And so what was great is after I did that in deep sleep, I was able to get 10 microamp years, which was super great. Thanks to the PPK I was testing, I was using, definitely recommend getting one of these. People are always like, oh, I wanna do low power stuff. It's like, unless you actually can measure, you don't really know, but you don't know until you know. And so this is the current at low. And then I think, yeah, in light sleep, it's about, you know, two milliamps. And then, you know, normal running, I think it's like 40 milliamps or something. So this is my earlier test of deep sleep. Sorry, this is the, yeah, like 40 milliamps and then light sleep, about two milliamps and then deep sleep, 10 microamp years, which is like, amazing, super great. So that design's done. So yeah, that's it. So that's the prototypes on my desk. So both of those are done and ready to go. So I wanna order those PCBs tonight, which is what I do after the baby's asleep. Okay, so let's go to the great search. The great search brought to you by Digikey and Adafruit. Thank you so much, Digikey. This is when Lady80 is the power of engineering at WSU. Find the things you need on digikey.com. Search is an art. What do you look for this? Not only is it like, you have to search, but you have to know what you're looking for. That's right. Wow, deep. Okay, so I just finished a design for this Itsy-Bitsy board. So let's go to the overhead real fast. I'll just show it. Really quickly. So this board, Itsy-Bitsy, so this is a style of board that I use for small breakout boards designed to be as compact as possible. And I use a micro USB and, you know, maybe I should be using USB type C, but for stylistic and historic reasons, I've been kind of sticking to micro B. And this is a micro B connector I use. And one thing you'll note is that this micro B connector, I don't think I have any other micro B, this is kind of the only micro B board I have on me. Oh wait, no, I've got like this Pico board over here. And then this is a Pico, which is also using micro B, although they use a slightly different style, which I'll talk about. And micro B, you know, it's a little, it's a little easier to work with. You don't need separate resistors on the CC lines. It's a little bit smaller. A lot of people still have micro USB connectors. I realized we didn't cover this connector on the great search. So let's go to the computer and I'll talk about this. So one thing to watch for with micro USB connectors is you really, really, really want to make sure that they don't rip off. And so what I do is if you see here, these big, big ass pads, there's four legs on the micro USB connector that I use. And the part is surface mount, but then the legs are through hole, but it turns out that you don't need to hand solder them because as long as you put enough solder on these pads, as long as you find them big enough, and then you pick and place the part in, it sits in, and then as it mounts, the solder wicks in and holds it in place, and you get that mechanical strength of the slots or the holes going all the way through the PCB. One thing is you definitely need to do slots. You can't use hole because you have to have the cutout be exactly like 10% more than the size of the metal tab. You have to fit through, but it can't have too much space. You need that solder to go in and, you know, cause it's not through hole soldering. You're only getting that thin layer that the stencil is depositing, but you still want it to suction in and like grab that part real well, and then you can even see that a little bit of the solder melts. You can see it's well-soldered because it's silver on the bottom, not gold. That means that solder from the top wicked all the way down, and so the part is being held by the entire PCB structure. And when I first started using this particular component, I asked Mr. Ladyada to use brute strength to try to rip it off, and he wasn't able to. And I know that there were a lot of dead boards at the time that used fully surface mount, and those will absolutely just like tear right off the PCB if you don't have any enclosure or anything keeping it in place. So let's go do the key and find micro USB connectors that have those legs we want for legs. I'll show you another thing about legs. So if you search for micro USB, you'll see cables, adapters and everything, but we just want the connectors. And there's actually a lot, it's interesting. USB, DVI, and HDMI connectors are all in one, but I only want micro USB, so I'm just gonna filter here for micro. So there's micro A, AB, B, and then B hybrid. You kind of just want micro B. Micro A and micro AB were used for USB on the go, but nobody really used it as far as I could tell. Unless you're doing it on the go, just get the micro B. It's a little less confusing. And then let's also search only for active. And then let's look for in stock only and not marketplace. Just look at the ones that are available in stock. Okay, so number of contacts 10, weird. I don't know what that's all about. I'm assuming that's a double connector, maybe? What is that? Oh yeah, oh, weird. Look at that, this is freaky. Maybe this is, is it like USB, like this is the extended USB? I don't know, kind of freaky. We don't want that. So let's undo that connector type, no, number of contacts. We want five contacts, USB, power, data plus, data minus, ID and ground. And then we want it to be a receptacle, not a plug. Plug is the thing that plugs in, that's from the cable, receptacle is what accepts the plug. Let's filter. And then, so the only thing is the mounting type it's confusing because again, we want surface mount but with two whole connectors. So I actually don't, I'm not gonna look at the mounting type because I'm a little worried that it's a little mix and match. Okay, so let's then look at what's available. So this is an example of a surface mount connector. So let's look at the model. And you see how there's the pads. Oh, this is kind of nice. It's fully surface mount. It only connects to the top of the PCB. This is fine. If you have something on the bottom, you don't wanna have anything on the mounting tabs go through the bottom because you have something on the bottom. I understand, totally cool. But if you don't have an enclosure that keeps this in place, it's gonna rip right off. So for like dev boards or anything, there's a chance of looseness. Even though it has these like mechanical tabs here, believe me, it can rip right off. So love this, but I don't love it so much. Okay, so then let's look. Here we are, now we're talking. So there's a couple, there's another surface mount one. Another surface mount one. I happen to like these style. I'll tell you why. First off, you see those back legs, the ones near the SMT connectors, they're kind of wide apart. There's some that are, let me see if I can find it. Ooh, it's like a vertical style one. Let me look for a horizontal, because I don't want, I don't really want vertical. I think it's confusing. I don't want the bottom entry, I want horizontal. Let's see if that gets rid of the vertical. Even though the vertical ones are cool. This is reverse plug. I'm just gonna try to see if I can find one that has the pins close together. Hold on, let me sort by availability. Okay, I think this is an example of one that is, yeah. So see this one, the legs are a little closer and you need to have like very thin annular ring through hole, holes like pads. I like to have a little bit of like, again, a little bit of extra space because I don't want these pins, these mounting pads to short to the pins. And I like to have a large annular ring because that means I have a good amount of solder-seed. Like I have a nice big distance here, no risk of shorting between the two. So while this one does have the four legs, it's not exactly what I'm looking for. And this one I think is only, this one is I think a 50-50. It only has two through hole. Yeah, this one has two through hole and then two SMT in the back. This is probably okay, but I really want full, full four. So let's keep going. This one is the close one. I think this was the one, yeah. I think this one, this one has a nice big distance. I like that these are large holes, mechanical connect all the way through the body. This would be my pick because it's got four through hole tabs, the five SMT and the tabs are far apart. You have plenty of space to make big annular rings, lots of solder, big mechanical strength. Keep this from tearing off your PCB design. So this is my pick and the price is pretty good too. Lots and stock. That's a great search. Where are you? All right, that's our show for the week this week. Thank you so much everybody. Bundle up, stay warm. We're going to film stuff, post the stuff. We'll see everybody all this week. Lots of new products and more. Thanks for joining us. We shall see you next week. Bye everybody.