 Live from New York it's Ask an Engineer. Hey everybody and welcome to Ask an Engineer. It's me Lady Aida the engineer with me Mr. Lady Aida on camera control. We've got a fun filled one hour show for you tonight all about making and hacking including and soldering and sewing and being creative and making stuff with your hands. So put down your phone unless you're watching us on the phone and join in in the maker fund. Mr. Lady Aida I want you to tell him. That's right. Yeah. Deals and surprises in Moorhead. New RGV is the code 10% off the native restore all the way up to 59 p.m. Eastern time. User lose it. Come on by. Save a book or two. We'll talk about some of our live shows. Show itself just happened. Thank you Les for hosting. We'll talk about Desk of Lady Aida which we do every Sunday including great search. We got JP's product pick of the week. We'll play the highlight video. We'll have a little better mind about JP's show tomorrow. We have advanced manufacturing, New York City factory footage, a glimpse of the things that we make here in New York City at Aida Fruit. We got some 3D printing videos. We got Iron and PI brought to you by DGKEE. This week it is... Hero say. Hero say. We're going to do a little bit top secret. We got some new products. We're going to answer your questions. We do that on Discord AidaFruit.IT slash Discord or discord.gg slash Aida Fruit. Come on by. Ask your questions and more. Ask an engineer for a reason. We do a ton of questions at the end. We do some throughout of course but you can sit around 24-7. Ask your questions. All that and more on you guest at Ask an Engineer. Okay, reminder. New RGB is the code. You get free stuff too. Yes. AidaFruit.com helps support us and keep all the code and open source hardware and tutorials and more even all the goodies going. So please do. And we'll give you some free stuff too to sweeten the pot. So $99 or more you get this beautiful PCB coaster made with a gold coat PCBs with an AidaFruit logo on it. $149 or more. You get a free KB2040. It's an RP2040 microcontroller board that is pro micro pinout compatible. So it's a great upgrade for your pro micro projects but now it has a powerful dual core Cortex M0 chip with 8 megabytes of flash and USB-C and STEMI QT and buttons and PIXELs and everything. Great for all sorts of projects. $199 or more for UPS ground shipping in the United States and we still have $299 or more Circuit Playground Express. Our favorite is round circuit board ever with the SAMD 21 on it. You can use it with Arduino or CircuitPython or MicroPython or code.org CSDiscoveries. It's a great way to learn electronics and coding with physical computing and no solder is required. You get all everything you need is built in. Yeah and someone just asked are the QT-Pies on sale for Valentine's Day. Yes of course they are. Just use the code. Oh man that's a good idea. We should have thought about it. Yeah that's an all that's it. But they're on sale 10% off. We're Valentine's Day. Yeah we did that on purpose. Yes I mean yes. Yes. On Monday it's a Adafruit holiday for the team so it's also a federal holiday so if you place an order on Monday I might not ship till Tuesday that is just a reminder it's President's Day. Adabox is shipping. How many have we shipped? Over a thousand. So 1800. Yes so that is over a thousand. So thank you everyone for your patience. We made our announcement that we would be shipping Adabox in 2023. We got a few at the door. Where's all the people always ask where's the Adabox with Adabox. Yeah so you can go to adabox.com. We put updates there. We're getting most of them out in February. We have our unboxing that'll happen in March. Look for the announcement. We're shipping hundreds a day. Yeah and full speed ahead. So thank you everyone for your patience. We got a few out at the end of 2023 and then you know it's only been a monthish and we got them out so after a very long COVID time period and then part shortage that impacted the world it was very difficult to ship any type of electronics. We redesigned over 700 products including our Adaboxes twice. Yeah two. Oh someone got their Adabox today. Thank you so much. Yeah keep it a secret. There's kids watching. So thank you so much everybody. We really appreciate it for your patience you know when we ship the Adabox if your credit card needs to be updated or your address we'll let you know and we will hopefully be able to ship the next one you know three months. We do a bunch of live shows. We just finished up the show until right now. Thank you so much Liz. We're going to watch the show until once we get off air. We do the show until every week some 30 p.m. Eastern time come by show all your stuff whether it be your makerspace, hackerspace, retro stuff, cool books, just anything to learn and share the idea of making stuff together. That's what show until is all about the longest running show until it's like 15 years now. Come on by. The link is in Discord every Wednesday at 7.30 and you're just saying next year it will be 20 years old. Yep and we've done a show and tell it just about every week since the technology has allowed it. You can't tell but we're still 25. At heart. Yeah I think the shirt is 25 years old. So we also do a show on Sundays. Descalata. It's in two parts. What did you show off for part one? Okay so I had a bit of a cold last week so did not get a ton of hardware, new hardware done but I did do some more work on Flopsy and I got it working with Arduino so I'm trying to go back to code that was working a year ago and being like does it still work which is not always true. So we got some of the demos working for Arduino code with the floppy disk reading and then today I was actually chatting with Jebler about how we're going to implement floppy disk writing so you can write through grease weasel which I have to do next but you can definitely read and one of the demos is you plug in the board into USB and it shows up like a floppy drive which is kind of cool. To talk about that and I also talked about some updates I'm going to be doing where I add Apple to Apple disk to interface support and also index sensor support. Okay and then we also challenged our lady Eda to show us how to use DigiKey in the best possible way because there's billions of parts on there. What did you show during the great search? Okay so oh I had a coffee but I didn't do anything. So for the index sensor for the floppy drive I want to be able to like sometimes tell when the floppy motor has rotated 360 degrees and so I'm going to use an optical sensor. To make it mounting easy I want to have an optical sensor that is like right angle so that the PCB and then I want the sensor to point out over the edge of the PCB. So I'm going to find a right angle and along reflective light sensor and turns out there's only one available in DigiKey but we found it and it's a good price since a lot of it in stock so check it out if you ever have to do reflective sensing I think I don't want to pick this up. All right and then on Thursdays we do JP's workshop here is this week's highlight. DS 3231 precision real-time clock breakout. This has i-square c to communicate with your microcontroller. It has a battery backup so it's always going to keep track of the time even when your project is powered down and it has the stem of QT connectors to make it plug and play with your microcontroller project so the crystal is sitting there oscillating but the temperature can change that oscillation so it has a temperature compensation so it can adjust the time that it's reporting based on any changes in temperature I'm going to plug that stem of QT cable into my real-time clock it's going to power up and then it is immediately going to grab the time off of the chip so I set this chip yesterday while I was setting up this project with the time and it has just been sitting there continuously running and calculating that time so it just updated and now here we are 113 and 30 seconds. DS 3231 precision real-time clock breakout with stem of QT. And don't forget JP's workshop is tomorrow and then on Friday we'll either be Scott or Tim on a deep dive. Friday is at 2 p.m. 5 p.m. Pacific. Let's do some Python on hardware. All right so we have our it for daily newsletter we do this every single week and go to it for daily you can get it via RSS you can get it on GitHub you can get it sent to you the email completely separate site we have our highlights of Python on hardware projects this is a submarine hunting game yeah with circuit Python we have uh had a fail at circuit Python this is a very cool guy yeah which people um post your projects on playground and like there's a bunch of it like Squid who I think is in the chat yeah posted a project it's super cool live and how to you know how to check code failures on circuit Python. We want to have the easiest best place for you to post your projects you know to worry about ads or for some people to log in to see stuff but anyways one of the things um that we like to do is cover kind of all the ways to run Python on hardware so we have this Raspberry Pi 5 review from PC World um I'm going to get to this other things in a second but one of the things that is in the news right now and I thought this would be kind of funny and when I asked Lady Ada what does she want to talk about for this week um she said oh I'll talk about one of the articles we linked to which is here is Raspberry Pi alternatives now we didn't time this or anything but the meme that's going around which I think is interesting there's a meme there's a meme that's going around I think this is interesting and then I'll bridge the gap here um so there is the Apple Vision Pro that came out and then there is the you know MetaQuest and I think each company has their own thing and each company has their own you know figurehead there's Cook from Apple there's Mark Zuckerberg from from Facebook you know Google has um their guy Microsoft is their guy so yeah who's the guy they're guys yeah and so um the interesting thing is Mark Zuckerberg just did like a very like I'm going to say AdaFruitStall video which is like the founder talking about stuff it's like so he so Mark Zuckerberg so he's sort of Aska Zuck so what I thought was interesting was um that just with like kind of not maybe they spent a lot of time on it and it made it look like it was like off the cuff like not at it but it was like he's like okay here's someone they're just gonna record me and they're gonna have and I'm gonna talk about the Apple Vision Pro and what I like about it and its strengths and weaknesses and that's actually really cool yeah and I thought how interesting it was that the CEO the founder of Facebook would do that because Tim Cook from Apple is not gonna he's not gonna say hey I tried the the quest the MetaQuest and here's what I think about it it's just different style totally but I thought it was interesting that like Mark Zuckerberg he's using the Apple Vision use the Apple Vision Pro and he's like hey this is why I think that the you know the MetaQuest is better and he gave you know complimented his competitor and the strengths and weaknesses and so um you know I don't get a chance to talk to the Raspberry Pi folks that often but I actually think Evan um from Raspberry Pi should should do something like this because I actually think he he has the ability to talk straight to the camera and say well here's what's good here and you know admire competitors all that stuff I think it'd be interesting for Evan to say hey here's the Raspberry Pi you know here's a Raspberry competitors out there here's what's good with them here's other things because I think that's kind of where we're at there's the companies that they need the polish videos and they will never do the comparisons and then there's some people who can look into camera who really know and what matters most of the time is the founder that gets their hands dirty and so I think that's why like Mark Zuckerberg was able to do this this comparison with Apple Vision Pro and MetaQuest because he's kind of in he's you can tell that he's really into this stuff not that Tim Cook is and this is different so when Lamar said oh yeah I'll talk about the five best Raspberry Pi alternatives in 2024 it's like as we don't like Raspberry Pi it's just this is interesting for us and we also don't like there are some things that are if you want yeah we'll tell you you know GPU powered yeah I like and video is gonna and of course we're gonna recommend Raspberry Pi yeah five stuff you know for for what makes sense but I think that that's one of the differences like companies there's there's companies of founders that are technical founders that are that are gonna able to be able to talk to people and some people like that style so people don't whatever um but I think this will be interesting so when this came up you're like oh yeah I'll talk about the alternative so lady I took it away there's there's other Raspberry there's Raspberry Pi alternatives yeah we have a blog post and some sums it up zuff zuffly yeah there's a whole article but what I think is interesting is well first off you know I've used some of these and like you're not going to have as much support as with the Raspberry Pi I mean like the Raspberry Pi like it is just there's millions of users and so there's there's more support there's more projects um but the orange pie it's like really really popular I'll give you scroll down um it's used um no you can just so fine yeah okay all right the orange pie um you know and you'll see like some of these have like you know different things that you can like you know they're add on like it looks like there's like a built-in battery on this one it has a smaller connector um this is the rock chip um okay scroll down all right and a lot of these like something actually can like run windows and stuff the you do bolt and I think it has like two PCI slots or no it has can ECC RAM so you can actually add like a significant amount of external RAM and it has like looks like growth connectors on the bottom um right so then go down there's the leap potato which we're going to tie this all together it's circuit Python in a minute yeah this thing I think what this one is actually like open source hardware this is uh the amlogic which is also used by the orange pie it's this chip set and it's like hardware compatible and it has the two by 20 header it looks like it also has infrared input um and there's they kept the AV outputs can I say they have a serial port uh it's kind of nice console and then the o-droid which is like really a beefy processor that looks like it's a real-time clock audio output built-in infrared as well so always they're good for like media servers for external control this also has a DC power input it's kind of nice you want to power it from not USB from a um DC power plug looks like as a buck converter so probably can handle it and of course the Nvidia nano you know is for you want GPU performance and you want to do AI um this is definitely going to have it's basically equivalent of like basically you know the specs but Raspberry Pi plus a co-processor core type of device now the thing that's a challenge though is um for microcontrollers you kind of have to have a different programming language a different thing but one of the things but by the way all these have different hardware interface layers all of these are very complicated except for we kind of knew this was coming so one of the things we have is uh we have I think four out of five of these are on Blinka already so if you go here and you type in like orange you see we have all the orange pies so the five the five plus the light the one um totally just support with Blinka and so you know if you want to GPIO iSport C SPI and use all of our libraries we have like hundreds and hundreds of libraries yeah a lot of example code will just work out of the box now not everything everything will work because like sometimes they have like very specific weird interfaces um for stuff but a lot of the basic GPIO and hardware interfacing will work if there's analog or PWM support we usually have that as well um and we have guides especially for the orange pie and you can look for the Nvidia Jetson Nano we have support and we you know we we try to get it so that you can use sensors displays OLEDs no matter what Raspberry Pi compatible incompatible Linux single board computer using and that's like a big deal because it didn't like believe when we did the initial port for Blinka that was not true a lot of them they all have their own little like weird ass GPIO hardware interfacing forks that are like yeah fork of a fork of a fork and they like tweak some like register values and then they're like ship it so the um you know in summary um one of the things that I think is important is like especially when you're in this like maker world and you like Adafruit like we're always going to do open source and we want to make something so whether you pick a Raspberry Pi or an orange pie or Nvidia you'll be able to use Blinka and if there is you know whether it be a supply chain issue or it's just right tool for the right job um we'll always recommend the right thing so yeah just try it's it's compatible in a hardware you know like and this was a big deal like you know when did this topic four years ago for you know Australia Linux conference and I was like I don't want to keep writing drivers for every interface and then the thing is like stuff in the Linux kernel changes like they do change stuff we can hide those changes behind so I don't know if I'll get time but one of the things I thought would be funny and useful is like oh hey I mean just like get to go to that Digitrends or get a five and just do the same thing as Zuckerberg because I like that there's some that was very technical I like that there's there's some founders that can do that and I think that's what people want to see more and more like the beautiful marketing videos and like okay you're going to watch Marvel movies with you know this thing on your head okay cool but I like the idea that someone was like well here's the actual tech specs here's the thing here's what I hear here's like kind of in the weeds um you know in one video take live we're doing this live but anyways I thought that was interesting this is live yeah so they saw me yawning yeah so anyways um check out that and more delivers to you every single week at Adderford Daily that's what we're all about thanks Minka all right let's do some speaking of open source and more lady you know we do open source hardware we have a bunch of guides we have a guide we have almost 3000 we're up to like 2900 and like 80 something I think yeah we're gonna be celebrating 3000 guides soon um so uh you know okay so uh let's start from the top so top left so the memento focus stacking so uh two weekends ago uh JP and I were like can we the memento camera the open source hardware camera that we designed can we control the autofocus to manually um focus in and out like there's an autofocus mode but can we give me manually focus and like step through the voice coil and the answer is after like a couple hours yes and thankfully also wrote some code the previous weekend for time lapse that did locking of the uh white balance and the exposure so that like you would get you wouldn't it wouldn't like auto exposure fix and like you'd get flickering um so JP wrote a great guide for focus stacking and um I don't know if you added a video or not but um you can do so this is picture of flowers and it's a macro photo and normally only one piece can be in focus but with this you can take 50 photos and then you use like free online software and it squishes it together and autofocus is everything you can also do uh dual focus or something nearby and far away is in focus if there's like like using horror films a lot and also can do um focus panning so like uh you know tracking through a shot and like focusing on different elements so um basically like you know usually you don't get to mess around with autofocus or the manual focus on a camera programmatically but you can work so so far work uh Aaron did a guide on uh this really cool double video trolled matrix using monster fur we'll do a video about that we did a guide for the um bff the dc power bff so if you have a qt pie board and they're very popular you want to power it with up to 20 volts dc um battery packs or dc power supply and you want to like use that for motor control or you just want to like be able to power your bff from everything not just a usb c um this is a sorry that's a buck converter so it'll be very efficient and then scroll down um then we've got from Liz I think we do have a one minute video like this we're going to play two videos um through yesterday what's what's the deal with the sushi conveyor belt projects from Japan I don't know but I love it so uh we got these bar displays we got the qualia let's show how to make a sushi conveyor belt um in Arduino also shows you how to use platform IO with the qualia board so if you want to do like intense projects that need c or Arduino you don't want to use circuit python um like this definitely benefited um from that because controlling that display uses the ps for am which means it's you need to be using c code if you want to get really good performance um but Liz did an excellent job and uh you know I also printed out this beautiful uh sushi nigiri case for it so like I don't I don't know why but it's cool I also got this gorgeous uh kind of um art uh deco yeah I'm gonna play this clock tonight um in a box unboxing guy we're not talking about that it's a secret and then I think the circuit python text I don't want to go if one's left last week so there you go that's the guides this week all right let's play a couple videos and then we'll do some in york city factory footage and then we're going to do 3d printing so I'm just going to go video to video to video then we'll see you on the other side for iampi okay take it away team bye make your own petable programmable art piece with an aida fruit feather esp 32 and a custom built grid of led strips control it with any wi-fi enabled device setup is quick and easy with the free open source w led software which gives you hundreds of animations and color combos this is a fun project with no coding but a little tricky soldering work you'll love creating patterns for your new furry friend see the full build tutorial at learn dot aida fruit dot com and remember to subscribe for more fun DIY electronics projects here's some factory footage and that is how it is made let's do some 3d printing we're going to roll right into the next one the next one the next one the next one we get two back back videos we're going to do the clock and then we're going to do a speed-up take it away knowing Pedro you can build a lovely digital clock with a large seven segment display a feather rp2040 and circuit python thanks to stem aqt connectors no soldering was required for this plug-and-play design this project features a 1.2 inch seven segment led display powered by the aida fruit feather rp2040 for timekeeping this uses the ds 32 31 real-time clock module for precise and accurate timing a rotor encoder is used to set the time making those daylight saving time changes quick and easy it also has an auto dimming feature which lowers the display's brightness so it can be bright during the day and dim overnight the 3d printed enclosure design is inspired by mid-century modern clocks that look both elegant and minimalistic the enclosure snap fits together and can be 3d printed without any support material we think this is a fun circuit python project for beginners or a starting point for season makers who might want to add more features the circuit python code has user configurable settings allowing you to set a minimum and maximum brightness depending on the time of day you can initially set the real-time clock module to match your current time and save the code to program the module to adjust the time the rotor encoder is used to set the hours and minutes by doing a long press and turning the knob the code takes care of converting the rtc to display 12 hour time on the seven-segment led display the feather rp2040 and the ds 32 31 rtc module are secured to a pcb bracket and everything is connected with stem acuity cables making this project plug and play a light diffusing gel filter helps to dim the brightness of the led segments making them appear much more crisp and legible our CAD models are open-source and free to download so you can modify them or reuse the parts in your own projects we hope this inspires you to try circuit python for your next electronics project and that's 3d printing for the week thank you so much no one paid for don't forget every single wednesday 3d hangouts don't pay for the longest running 3d printing show in the known universe um for good eye the code is new rgb it'll make sense if the james webs telescope is gonna like some older yes we'll find another one okay um let's uh do an mpi hi on mpi brought to you by digikey this week it is here say lady aida what is the new product introduction of the week this week okay so this week we're gonna be talking connectors connectors here say and i thought actually like you know this is valentine's day and we're doing the stream and so one thing i thought was people often ask how do you pronounce the name of this company is it high rose the answer is no it's hero say just think of david bowie heroes hero say um and you probably know this company even if you don't know this company because they are the ones who invented the ufl connector which is basically used for all rf devices it's a really well designed connector that allows you to connect up to like five or six gigahertz antennas um on a pick and place welcome connector that is uh we connectable multiple times i looked up the pand it was in 1993 with a beautiful diagram um so heroes say is you know they they've been known for very long time for making very high quality connectors um but this week we're going to talk about uh the connector the df 40 series which we first saw on the intel edison if you remember the intel edison on the bottom there they had a connector and this was a like very small single board computer that i think it predates the raspberry pi um and it had a connector that would let it connect to a main board um we actually carried the connector and and you know we carried um boards it would plug into and then more recently it's um been used on the raspberry pi compute module um so you know this is single board lives computers seem to like this connector so on the bottom of the cm4 the cm3 was like a sim uh like a memory out format but there were enough pins um on the cm4 there's two 100 pin connectors and then you can connect it to this main board and what i think is interesting about this is that the these two connectors are the only connectors for the compute module um and yet you get two hdmi outputs that i think can do like 4k a piece um ethernet uh usb high speed um micro sd card with like you know uh high speed sdio connectivity uh power pcie uh you can do um dpi tft display output uh two cm dc csi cable connectors and two dsi connectors so like a lot of very high speed um dead interfaces multiple video camera ethernet interfaces but also in pcie but also the power for the module is uh comes to these connectors um by the way if you want to create your own um shon hemel with digikey did a great tutorial on creating your very own um breakout board for the cm4 um so you know when you look at the specs for this connector what's really neat about this connector is it does like a lot like it does more than you expect like for example it can do um up to 30 volts ac or dc so like most connectors that are that small and fine pitch you know maybe they're rated for like six volts 12 volts or something but this can go up to 30 and the rated current uh is also pretty high point three amps i am assuming that's per pin and then of course if you need more current if you you know for the cm4 you need more current like two or three amps um because of the uh the processor you have you just have multiple pins in a row you know like four power pins or four ground pins so you can you know basically triple the amount of current and then the um performance is it's actually specced for usb 3.1 uh mippy sata pcie with a transition rate of uh 10 gigabytes per second so it's designed for high speed and high power and it can do high current which is where like you get basically a three-in-one connector because normally you'd have to have um you know one connector for the high speed stuff that's like designed for you know differential high speed signals and then another one maybe for the power connectivity and then you know maybe another one if you have uh you know high voltages coming through um compare this to um you know the the 2x20 connector on the raspberry pi classic and other single board computers you know you're going to have this extra height like this is the slimmest connectivity you can get it's still like eight ten millimeters high um and also every time you remove it you risk bending the pins uh which kind of sucks so one of the things that's nice about this connector is you don't you know it's designed specifically for um the pins are inside they're protected and there's this groove so that when you plug it in it only really like there's no way to be off by one set of pins so you're not going to like crush the pins and when you remove it as long as you um remove them and place them parallel and flat and you push down in the center um the connector is rated for at least 30 connect you know connections and they even say like you know try to be careful try not to wedge it from side to side but you know it it is we will not fail instantly when you do that so they're like please try not to but you know you can walk it a little bit back and forth and I thought I'd just show the connector if we go on uh the overhead here so this is the compute module and you can see like this is each 100 pin connector a very very fine pitch it doesn't take up a lot of room but does allow a lot of expansion and then you know um you know line it here and then I'll plug it in so when you when you plug it in you can sort of feel it kind of clicks into place before even the contacts make contact and then there's this really nice satisfying like soft plug you can feel it tactily when it's plugged in you know it's it's connected in nicely okay uh where we're okay so oh actually sorry can you go back one one more um something to note is uh oh to come into the overhead oh geez I wanted I remember why I want to show the height so I think this is like the one the two millimeter height so the height of the connector can vary you have both the socket and plug side and so you can mate and match different heights for one to the connector and it can be as low as 1.5 millimeter um or as high as four millimeters although note not every pinout is available in every stacking height so you might have to have like more pins if you want like the higher you go looks like you know they're like we don't have everything in in the 4.0 you only have like 50 or higher uh probably also because you have to have mechanical stability for those heights um and this is just showing this is like a little diagram that shows the variations in height so four millimeters is like quite quite high you can definitely get a lot of components inductors maybe even a usb connector underneath there they also have a shielded version which has ground shielding connection although with that one it doesn't have all the heights only has 1.5 and three millimeters you can also use this connector with uh fpcs so if you want a flex cable um they do tell you like here's how you do the stiffener in order to be able to connect from an fpc to a circuit board although to be honest we've seen these mostly with um pcb to pcb designs and you know when i was i was thinking about like how to describe like you know these connectors and how we see them on these really high quality boards from intel and raspberry pi and i think of it kind of like the wide kkk you know zippers that probably have on your nice coats or your nice jeans or your nice dresses um if you have a hundred dollar board or even more expensive circuit board or design and you use like you go with a bad connector you save 50 cents but then like you know somebody plugs in wrong and like shears off the connector or like crashes one of the pins the board is now useless and connectors are a really big failure point so having a good quality connector um is worth the investment so that you don't end up by having someone accidentally try to plug something backwards or they don't have it lined up correctly doesn't actually like destroy um because you can easily destroy both sides of the connector if you you know if you don't have a good one and this one is designed specifically you know even beginners can use it i think that's why raspberry pi picked it and what intel s needs is your maker board so people who are not super experienced engineers um easy to line up easy to insert easy to remove lots of cycles um but has that high density for use with high power and high current and high speed signals and there is a ditch key so this is the df 40 f um which i think is a higher temperature version but uh the family is is quite large um with a lot of different sizes pinouts heights etc so you pick the one you need um and go to town enjoy using this to uh mate and connect complicated boards together with very slim heights and i'm going to play video and then uh we'll get off to new parts about it discover the df 40 f series from heros a a leading solution and floating board to board connectors expertly combining a compact design with unmatched performance it's the connector of choice for forward thinking platforms let's explore the standout features of the df 40 f series it uniquely adapts to misalignments in x and y directions thanks to its innovative floating design with a range of plus or minus 0.3 millimeters with its slim 0.4 millimeters pitch and 3.68 millimeters width this connector is a testament to space efficiency it's compatible with the df 40 t allowing for versatile stacking height options from three and a half to 6.0 millimeters designed with automotive applications in mind it can endure temperatures up to 125 degrees celsius need speed the df 40 f delivers it supports data rates like pc i e gen four at 16 gigabits per second transmission from automotive applications to medical tech wearables notebooks tablets and portable gaming devices the df 40 f series ensures versatile and dependable connections stay ahead of the curve with the df 40 f series connector for deeper insights visit and subscribe to our youtube channel to electric connecting the future all right don't forget to code is new rgb very bunch of free stuff let's kick it off with new new new new new new new new new new new new new new new new new new new new new new new new new new new new all right what's up okay we've got this um esp32 s3 box 3b which is um versions of popular s3 box it's like it got a display and it's got a little case and it's got a thingy it plugs into um this is just a lower cost version that doesn't come with sensors uh so we have a slightly more expensive one that comes with sensors and this one still has the the box esp32 s3 box and the stand but doesn't have the extra sensors sign up we'll have in stock soon we also have coming soon two versions of our itsy bitsy esp32 uh we've designed this many many years ago but during the part shortage we weren't able to get it out the door but now it's uh it it lives again clearing up my my long to-do list so this is an itsy bitsy size board so it's got um 20 gpio and power pins um micro usb because i want it to be compatible with the other itsy bitsy boards in case you have an enclosure uh you can swap out whichever one you want i don't want to have maybe i'll make a version with usbc later um on the bottom it has a usb c usb serial converter chip um and uh some markings and uh alternate battery input if desired we also have a version with a wfl connector designed by herosie by the way in case you're wondering there's a stem and qt port on the top um neopixel on both of them um user button reset button and then auto reset circuitry uh this is really great for very small iot projects that need esp32 which has wi-fi bluetooth classic bluetooth low energy we support it in circuit python has great arduino support there's also micro python support and a lot of other chips as well the esp32 is like a very standardized uh chip what's really nice about this board is it's got um very very good low power uh capability i just tested it before the show 10 micro amps in deep sleep which is like incredibly low um it's as low as the esp32 can get um so by kind of designing this a nice way using a good regulator on it um you could definitely use this for very low power iot projects or any project where you just need uh more pins in the qt pie but you don't need as many as a feather and there's also one pin that's shifted up to five volts so great for neopixel projects all right and then uh this is red yeah and the bottom is the same just this one has a wfl connector okay next up uh this is not 100 bags but this project is for 100 bags uh we've been using a heat sealer to ship products because they're less likely to accidentally open um they're sealed they're faster they get auto bar coded we love our heat sealer but we still have a lot of these bags left over because we had to buy a lot of them a couple years ago uh and we still use them for some products but uh we still have a lot and we would like to sell them to because some people want them so if you would like 100 of these adorable two by three inch approximately zip top anti-static bags you can now pick them up at packs of 100 for a couple bucks a piece it's a really good deal help us clear out our inventory and uh you can reuse them as many times as you like um great for storing little electronic parts i'll say i store my prototypes in these little bags okay next up um next up there's a revision for the flora neopixels sheet so for a very long time we were using the ws 28 11 s which was the first version of the all-in-one neopixel led um and what's cool about that chip is it can handle up to 9 volt dc power but uh that chip is pretty much discontinued so now we've changed up for the sk 6812 which is um you know our standard uh neopixel compatible led um you know this is the same size same pinout same shape same everything the only difference is you can no longer use it with voltages above 5.7 5.5 volts so sorry if you were happening to power your projects from 6 to 9 volts you can't do that anymore without a regulator a buck converter um but in exchange because i'm not no longer using a chip that i have to led chip i have to chase after the price is lower so i'll drop the price um this is a great deal if you want to have little sowable leds get them in a sheet just pop them out and trim them yourself okay and then next up the stars trip besides you lady our team our staff and everybody make it think it is yay it's the neo rgb stem aboard uh this is the board i designed for myself because i was so tired of wiring up analog rgb led strips with transistors and um you know resistors and power connectors and like whatever whatever i want to make it really easy to control analog led strips that's led strips that don't have neopixels in them a lot of them use 5 sorry these 12 volts um or even higher but 12 volts is the most popular um and so now i have a board where you have neopixel signal in like your standard neopixel that comes from any microcontroller or even a raspberry pi these days and on the output you have three common anode uh rgb channels uh plus power and ground you connect to the terminal block and it acts like a single very very bright very large neopixel you can also use this with anytime you have like an led array that has pw mable pw mable inputs this will basically do the pw mable control eight bits per channel 24 bits total and then you just treat it like a neopixel so you know again wonderful if you um have analog neon or led strip or something you're you know for some reason you want to you know they're definitely for for long extends extensions they're cheaper than using neopixels and you don't have individual led control within the strip but maybe you don't need that maybe you want to like do a single collar for the entire thing so i have a demo on overhead so this is my standard at mega 328 metro arduino compatible and i'm powering it from uh nine volt here so this is nine volt power i connect the red wire to the stemma board from v in so it's nine volts ground to ground and then the neopixel signal it thinks it's connected to a single neopixel pin six um this is a bright power led telling you that the power is good you can barely see it because it's only one led but there is a little bit of blinking going on on the signal red led over here and then you just use the terminal screw block to connect red green blue and then this black wire is v in so it's the 12 volt power um and then this just acts like a neopixels doing neopixel swirl so um it's great because this can handle three amps per channel up to 16 volts so if you have like a gigantic star rgb led or again like you have a gigantic plate or only led strips and you don't have to be rgb led strips if you have white like you know not uh cool warm or natural white or sometimes there's um led strips that are analog that have uh color mixing so you can have you can change from cool to warm to neutral white you could basically have this act as if it was a neopixel and again make it a lot easier to control um if you're using more than two amps total uh recommend not going through the jstph just go through the terminal block so you just power directly from the uh the terminal block here and uh you can control again you know nine amps total between all three channels one thing I will mention is that if you're using rgb w led strip this only supports three channels I haven't quite found a chip that supports four channels yet that is neopixel compatible so you have a choice of either just controlling three of the channels or there is um you know an output pin here if you want to chain you could connect uh the fourth channel on a second one of these and then just control it as if it was the second neopixel afterwards you have to do the the logic for you can you treat it as two neopixels the first one is rgb and the second one is just w um but I'll let you know or sometimes again some strips at five channels again you'd use two of these uh one for each set of three so I think this will make wiring a lot easier for people definitely make my demos a lot faster so uh hopefully folks enjoy I know Erin who does a lot of neopixel projects has already been excited she's like yay I can't wait to use this to already simplify some wiring on a project I did for a tiki bar and that's new okay don't forget the code is new rgb we're gonna do some top secret then we're gonna do some questions you can jump them in discord let's do some top secret I really do what is this this is the new itsy bitsy esp 32 I designed this board in 2020 so this is one of those boards that's like oh part shorted is over let's like try to get back to it so we just got these assembled and they're double-sided they've got the usb serial converter on this side esp module with eight megabytes of flash two megabytes of ps1 on the top plug it into the tester and then we're using apico using um usb to serial to do the programming so let's give it a second and it flashes the file uh you can see on the computer it's flashing it over usb to serial so it's doing usb host to the uh wch 9102 chip uh to program the esp 32 and then in a few seconds it's going to finish the test and then you'll see the test complete 34 35 36 okay so now it's going to test all the pins oh and this one is not passing okay then it's uh it's fine you have to hold it down 31 seconds later and then the support is done being tested and then when you reset it does a little nice rainbow glow so this has passed test and we'll be able to get it to the store real soon all right and then you're making swizz off okay so we've talked about the desk of lady aida this uh tcrt 1000 optical reflective sensor that's the right angle it's right maybe if you duck your head down you can see the two things sticking out the right angle style and then this has petiometer you can change the current going through the uh sensor and then um you know i was thinking because i just did this neo rgb maybe folks want to like you know just make something neopixel like a single led that doesn't need the high current uh pass transistors so it's made a breakout for this ws 2811 f chip it's like basically like a neopixel on a chip uh you can connect any any led you like and i made a little breadboard friendly friend right does top sake for the week yeah okay we are gonna roll right into question we have a couple lined up right away let's uh uh get right to it okay first uh believe it uh um is it possible to make a diy solder flow at home asking for friends really in the pcbs well you can do like like a hot plate if you want to just reflow boards if you're looking for like a like a like a solder reflow um like a machine sorry select a solder machine that's a lot harder but you can get solder plots and you can dip stuff into them so like you can kind of sort of fake it okay um folks were talking about this in the chat can you make them a minute to take multi uh label picks from the far focus and to close focus enough circuit pi thing combine all the pics to a full focus picture you could it probably be like super slow it's just so you need a computer i always use a computer it's it's it's a really yeah first talk about that eventually i mean turn compatible computer yes yes well yeah i mean a graphic i could do it but i don't i don't mind okay mesh tax it seems to be the talk for the last couple months seems eight for your well suit for this niche any plans for their support for it would prefer eight for adversity i have no idea what mesh task to get sorry is that like a i don't know sorry how would you measure the pulse within cycle time of a digital signal like frequency and duty cycle of a pwm signal can be done with our pi and python or something for a micro what is the interface for that kind of input wants to read the values programmatically rather than using a oscilloscope or d yeah you need a frequency counter so you definitely pop i mean there's some chips that can do it um but you probably want to use a mic controller with like a counter input um it's actually quite a tough problem because you have to make sure that the counter can handle the frequency that you're looking at um maybe i want to post the forums maybe but um i think definitely you won't either customize chips or program my controller okay mesh testing is a lower thing well i hope it's a replacement for things network because things network has not been very happy about people with single you know if you have a single channel or device or like that into it so um i'll take a look i've just been i've been out of touch of the lore stuff okay well i can do it um it's a bit t 30 esp 32 what is the voltage range for the bat pen possible to power various three x a a or triple a 5.5 vision volts on the go yeah it's a it goes into the rt 90 80 uh through a chucky diode so you definitely want to give it about 3.6 volts to about six volts so anywhere anywhere in between there okay a question for eight of fruit does eight of fruit have something that can efficiently limit current to stalled servos drawing too much current would prefer them to stall weekly or temporarily stop and fixing my shoddy code will enable more pin aggressively but electronics hardware protection would be good should i use poly fugitive current limiting ic or something else got modules for this scenario making a servo based wood tile display with 192 servos 12 groups of 16 servos managed to burn out mosfets a 12 knockoff pca 9635 16 channel servo control board serves me right for not buying made of fruit which comes from i think that's it that's not well i mean yeah um yeah current limiting a servo your servos can draw up to two amps um they definitely they go to town um yeah that is a challenge because you want to individually control you definitely want there are current limiting ic's there's e fuses and they'll the current limit and a lot of them even have a thing with the auto retry or they'll just like reduce the current to a certain amount so i think they did um a great search on e fuses but um check to jiki for e fuse chips and i'm positive they have one that's five volt two amp i just don't know off the top of my head um yeah just lady on sunday just fun questions you watch super ball we're just busy with stuff so yeah we have a aid of fruit and kids so we don't really i i understand that it was uh in overtime i would love to sit yeah and i understand there was a lot of like celebrity stuff and um you know i do think that the super bowl is a great opportunity for a big chunk of uh at least in the u.s for people to come together i know there was a tragedy today with a since why we can't have nice things there was um shooting at a parade a celebration of super bowl today that's messed up but generally speaking you know sporting events and just like humans like to come together and celebrate something so and i do like the the friendly um competition and you know the the teams uh you know everyone was everyone's at their best and it's it's a very american thing and it's nice to see everyone come together so as far as like the the the radiation of that we you know you can't avoid it there's super bowl commercials and there's all the stuff but you know there is a general feeling in the in the nation around super bowl it's like hey everyone's kind of watching this thing and doing this you know we're busy with with working stuff but it is nice um that everyone's to come together um and uh aside from that i think we have one last question okay the eliminated push push instructions say the forward voltage on the led is about 2.2 volts was connected to 20 or a thousand resistors that necessary a two well a two volt led would usually take 56 ohm um you can go lesser but i'd like to give people because i don't know what voltage you're connecting to so if you want to calculate it out um you know i think i think you know keep it to like 10 to 15 20 milliamps it's always great to start with about 1k no matter what your voltage is you know you won't destroy it and then adjust as necessary so yeah that was the questions all right that's our show tonight thank you so much everybody the code is new rgb you saw why you want to be 10% on and uh don't forget there's free stuff special thanks to uh to car behind scenes and running stuff in the ad for community sport and publishing side well we do the show thank you um see everybody next week this has been an ad for production we'll see you on time on once in next week bye bye hey have a great week here's your mom zener bye