 and welcome to DeskLadyAda. Hey everybody, it's me, LadyAda. Desk time, it's a Sunday night and that means we're gonna check in. What's going on at my desk? We got a couple little things going on here that I thought we would do a little bit more of a mail bag, show some things that we received and maybe also show off some of the stuff I'm routing out here. So maybe let's start with the overhead and we'll show off some of these things that we got. Let's go. Okay. So first up, we finally got the macro pad out. So folks who remember, I've been working on this on the show for quite a bit and it's always like the first product of a category kind of takes the longest because I have to learn all the things I didn't know and find parts and do the layout and takes a couple revisions. This I think took like five revisions, four revisions. But it's finally done. So it's a three part PCB design where you've got this part. You've got the mechanical plate, the main PCB plate and then this really nice decorative back plate that Philby designed with a kind of a space theme because we're thinking of like mission control. Like, you know, what are these? This is like your little mission control area and I got a sample today of these are called like milk pudding or like pudding top or like double skin, you know, pudding caps. And this is an add-on kit. So it's not like the main alpha numeric kit. It's kind of like the, you know, the mat, like the alpha, the number pad area. And it's a little like annoying because they're not all the same height. Like you can kind of see that there is like, these are tilted a little different because it's meant for, you know, a Cherry MX layout where like there's a little bit of a curve to make it more, you know, finger friendly. But if you put the keys in the right order, you know, it's not too bad. Like at least it's a consistent curve. And so this is just me playing around with different key caps. You know, I wanted to try these out. And this is also why when I made these key, when I made the layout design, I picked, no, I don't have one here, but I picked North facing LEDs. So the LEDs, if I pull out one here, the LEDs on the top because, you know, you can decide where the LED is on when you do a mechanical key switch layout. And it's never in the center. It always has to be on the side. So it's like, do you do it at the top or the bottom? Some people like North, some people like South. But if you do North, it just means that a lot of low through key caps look really good because the text is at the top. So this is a design. So this is just showing the demo. So we made like 150 to start. So we're gonna be, we're slowly putting them in the shop as we prep them up. Another thing is like, you know, how do you prep and prepare for sale and sell safely? Something with like a lot of, it's like this is sticking out and this is made out of glass and it's like a little delicate. But I think we've got, we've got it close to done. And if you haven't picked up a macro pad, just sign up and we're getting more into the shop soon. All right. Some people, some people did get them. So that's the macro pad space theme and putting cap. So I think this is okay. It is okay for us to stock. The other kit was really uneven, but this one's pretty even. I think, I think this would be satisfactory. But yeah, you kind of can't change the layout. We also got this innovation handbook from Dijki Dijki sent us. We'll be doing a deeper dive on Wednesday about this, but this is here now, so we wanted to show it to you. Yeah. So they actually have a bunch of Adafruit things in here. You'll see some of these photos are a little familiar. This is like our motor driver. But folks who remember the Make Notebooks, this is kind of similar. It's got a little bit more electrical engineering detail to it, but you know, good reference stuff. I think this would be a great gift for a student. Like I would have used this all the time when in school, I would have like referenced this because a lot of the stuff is like, if you're an engineer, you're like, oh, I know some of the, you know, I know how to read or resist our code, but like a lot of beginners don't. So it'd be good for like a high school student or a college student going into engineering or interested in engineering. Like this is kind of handy too. The nanometer to spectrum panel and- Yeah, I put the short earl in the- Yeah, check it out. And then like some Raspberry Pi pin out. I mean, like that's very handy. Beaglebone, Arduino, breadboards and fun Digikey facts. There's a weather center you can check out. It's cold there. And then a lot of gridded lines of paper, which I really enjoy. I like to lay out my designs on gridded paper. So this is cool and you get lots of them. So you don't feel like you have to save them. And I think it was pretty cheap too. So you can pick it up. DKhandbook-nd for checkout fills URL. So did a good job. And they're gonna definitely do more versions. Like they're just like, this is our first one. And like, you know, I know how it is. You wanna get it at the door. And if you guys have any suggestions or recommendations at Digikey on social media, either on like Twitter or Facebook or Instagram and suggest some things to them because it's really easy to add pages if you have good recommendations for it to add. I think they did a lot, but the community of course knows even more. All right, any questions? Nope, keep going. All right. So next thing I thought we would do a little, a little mail bag. So you got this kit from Cyber City Circuits. Yeah. Our friends over there. Make Augusta. Make Augusta, and you chatted with them recently and you were chatting with them about business. Yeah, we try to help maker companies a lot. You know, at some point everyone considers you competition. So, you know, people aren't nice to each other. But when folks are first starting out, if we can and they want, we always help people out. And even if they're bigger companies, we always try to give advice. Or if they're smaller companies, you always try to give advice and just share stories and try to help them because we didn't really get any help. So that's what we do. We pay it forward. So Cyber City Circuits, they do a subscription service, they do contract manufacturing, and they have workshops and more and I talked to them about bids and more. All right. Okay, so you get like a little storage bag. So this is like just a little swag, which I kind of like. I think that it's cool that a lot of these subscription boxes give you a little bit of swag with them. And then here's the kit. And there's some paper. Okay, so we get a little thank you note. This is, wanna give you a special thank you for the people who enjoy these. That's nice. Card, a reference card. And this is the 555 timer. This is a reference diagram for 555. You also get soldering panda with a space suit or something going on there. Good job with soldering. Hold in soldering iron well. Hold in the solder well. Nice work. Good panda. Okay. And then this one is the bleep bug kit. And I guess they're the Twitter signal skew. Okay. Check it out. They dump it all here. Okay. So this is by signal skew. So this is a little, there's more detailed information, but let's check out what's going on here. So you got a coin cell battery. You got a custom PCB designed in Denver, Colorado, Kitted in Augusta, Georgia. Okay. So this is cool. Made in the US. And let's see what we got here. We've got a 556 timer chip. So dual 555. And then it's got a socket. That's smart because people often solder in chips backwards. So if you have a socket, and I also like that they have the silk screen underneath to show you which way to orient it. So this would pop in right there. And then you've got a buzzer piezo buzzer. These are great. So these are nice and loud. And then you can remove this. So inside there's a little piezo with two pins. So you can make nice and bloopy bloopies. You've also got, and these are symmetric. You know, it says, I know it says positive, but they're symmetric. I'll get this inserted. Okay. Nice tight fit. This is the coin cell battery holder. So this goes here. One second. Okay. So it goes like that. You got a bunch of resistors and capacitors and diodes. So this is going to be part of the timing circuit for the 556. And then switches. Oh, these are nice switches. I like the triangular pads on them. I've never seen these switches before. This is a kind of, I've seen ones that are three in a row. But what I like about these is they're going to be very mechanically stable because they are not planar. They make like a solid triangle. I remember when I did through-hole kits, the hardest thing was finding, you know, everything has to be through-hole and reliable. And that was not easy. So I like these switches. I've never seen them before. I would have used more switches in my kits if I'd seen these before. All right. Consolidate together. And this is an annoyance circuit. So what this does is you have one half of the 555 is going to make like a high-pitched tone, like maybe, you know, four kilohertz or something. 10 kilohertz, something nice and BB. These like to oscillate at like about two to four kilohertz. And then the other 555 turns on every, you know, hour or so and beeps once, which is really annoying. I remember like, what was it? Like our DSL line when the battery's low, it beeps like twice an hour. Like beep, beep, and then it doesn't beep again for like another hour when the battery's low. It's the most annoying thing in the world. Yeah. Folks, don't do that in your part. Make a kit to do it, get it out of your system. Don't make products that have an audible beep that only beeps once an hour because it's not human-friendly. Just why this is a cool prank. So this is fun to build if you're like a kid and then you stash it somewhere, drive your parents crazy. Good stuff. All right, so that's the mail bag. A cute kit so you can subscribe and get a new kit like every month or so. How many do they do at once a quarter? All right, cool. All right, thank you, Cyber City. All right, what do we got next? Okay, and then I was gonna show the board I'm working on. I have to do a lot of redesigns, but I thought we'd get right into the great search after that. Okay, show the board, and then tell me when you're ready for great search. Okay, so let's go to here. Okay, so last week I showed off the IS-37. This is 3-1, but this is actually the 4-1. So having found a two millimeter LED, I started the layout. So using some Eagle Grids tools, I've laid out a nice grid of nine by 13 RGB LEDs, and all the LEDs need a little bit of resistance. They don't do, I guess it's constant current, but maybe you wanna have a resistor also to help you detect shorts, maybe, I don't know. So there's a resistor array set over here, and then this is the pinouts. It's gonna have breakouts here, and then it's gonna have two semiconductor connectors, and then I have to finish routing it. But so far, I was able to, thanks to this LED, I kinda squished up the pads a little bit so you can see the green row column. This green column goes through the LED. The blue goes on the left side, and the red goes on the right side. And so that way, this is actually all planar. I haven't used the bottom of the board yet. So I can use the bottom of the board for the rows and the top for the columns, and it's very nice. I was a little worried that I'd have to use a four-layer board, but thankfully, because this all worked out, and I think these traces are only eight mil. Hold on, I'm in inches right now, sorry, millimeters. This trace is seven mil, but that's fine. It's a seven mil, so it's seven seven, but it all, like I said, single plane, very nice. The other board I'm working on is we designed this a while ago. This is, hold on, let me do the turn off the bottom of the board. This is a feather wing that does can. It's, you know, SPI over can using the popular MCP 2515. Now I actually had redesigned this to use the MCP like 2625, which is an all-in-one chip that does both the SPI to can and the can transceiver part. However, it can get that part. So I'm actually reverting back to an earlier version where we had it split into an MCP 2515, which is like a super popular SPI to can converter chip, and a separate can transceiver. And so this is where we're gonna get into the great search. Where are you? The Great Search brought to you by Digikey and eight of fruit every single week. Lady 80 uses her powers of engineering to help you find things on Digikey site this week. We're flip-floppin'. We're flippin' and floppin'. So what is the flip, what's a flip and floppin'? So I don't know the technical word for this technique, but I've seen it, and it tends to happen around park shortage times. Like I've seen, this is one of those like beasts that evolves when there's park shortages. Like the McRib. Like the McRib. So this is designed for a can bus adapter for the feather wing. So this here is the MCP 2515 in SOIC. And here is the transceiver, which is, I think, I don't know the exact part number. I think it's the MCP 242542. So originally I wanted to use this, the MCP 25625. However, this part is completely dawn off the face of the earth. I'm never gonna find it for like another year or two. And so I thought, let's go back to a design that includes the standalone can controller to SPI interface. Very common and still available. Plus a can FD transceiver. And between the two of these, like you've got your can design. The only issue is is that now I'm a little burnt, right? Because it's like, I waited too long to order parts for my other design, which I kind of preferred. I thought it was a little superior, but I didn't wanna wait till 2023 to get the board out. And I don't know when I'm gonna get chip. So I don't wanna wait, I wanna release it. But I'm a little concerned that I'm not going to be able to get the most common package for this chip is SOIC. But I may not be able to get SOIC. Now, since this board is large enough, I decided to do a flip flop design. What that means is I have the SOIC package out here and then inside the SOIC package, I put the QFN package. And then over here, likewise, if you look, you can see the SOIC package large here. And then inside I have a TDFN package. So there's two packages. And I can flip flop between the two. I can click in place whichever one I want. There is a risk to this. You're gonna have solder, unless you decide to have separate stencils. If you have one stencil, that stencil's gonna be cut, you're gonna have solder underneath the chips. However, SOICs, they're not super flush against the PCB. And so I don't mind doing it with SOICs. I wouldn't necessarily do it with a TSOP maybe. But SOICs are kind of big and they can float a little bit higher. There's a little bit more space. So is this the best engineering practice? Yeah, probably not. However, desperate times bring desperate measures. So let's go, did you key, and find which packages are available for the transceiver and the CAN controller. And so we can pick what we're going to, how did I pick what I ended up using? Sounds cool. Oh, by the way, if anyone's wondering where I took the name flip-flop from, it's from Flip-flop Hub, not flip-flops, like latches and stuff. The first time I used this, I was like in the middle of building a single speed. And I was like, oh, you can use one or the other. It's like a flip-flop hub. Okay, I don't know. Made sense of the time. Did you key hand because here, by the way, you can pick that up. So let's start with the MCP2515. This is the CAN controller. And so traditionally, again, the SOIC is what you would normally pick up. And you can see here, this is available in four packages, which is good, right? It's like, it's a little counterintuitive, but sometimes there's multiple packages. Again, if you're using the flip-flop design, you're maybe more likely to be able to get something that'll fit. So let's skip the dip and go to SOIC, TSOP, and QFN. Now we're desperate, so we don't care what the packaging is. Normally I would say get cut tape or tape in real, but I'll take tube because I just, I need chips. So what it looks like is the QFN is in stock now. So it means I could probably launch with the QFN, but you'll note it's more expensive than the SOIC. Like you can get the SOIC for 191 or 209, and the MCP2515 in QFN is 224. So it's, oh, sorry, it's a little bit more expensive than the SOIC version, but again, what's really expensive, not having any parts. So what I did do just got a curiosity is I added some to my cart to see the lead time. Again, it's not promise, but it gives you a sense. So I basically said like, okay, if I bought 1000 of these, you know, they think that they're gonna get them, you know, in August, maybe September. So what I could do is launch this product now using the QFN, and then when the SOIC comes into stock, you know, I can order those now, and then when they ship, you know, I can decide, okay, then I'll switch over to the SOIC and just reprogram the pick and place. And that's not a big deal. It takes only like 10, 20 minutes. So the other question is why did I, yeah, so that's why I picked the SOIC and the QFN. There's also a T-SOP version, but honestly, because it was out of stock, and it was as expensive as the QFN, and I kind of figured it would be like, it was like, if I was gonna pick two things, I was like, well, I think I'm gonna pick the QFN and the SOIC. Like it was a little bit of a gut thing, but it's also like the QFN is currently in stock and the SOIC is the most popular package. So like that's the two I picked. So the next part was the MCP, pardon me, it's the MCP24254D. And also, by the way, check the data sheets because it'll also have the packages. So you can see here, there's actually two versions of this. There's the 2542 and 2544. I want the 2542, which allows three volt logic and five volt transceiver voltage. Yeah, it converts 3.3 volt logic from the can transceiver, sorry, for the can converter, the transceiver will let you take three volts in and send three volts out, but convert it to plus or minus five volts on the outside, which is more people like that because it can go a little farther. Anyway, so let's check out the 2542 and see what packages are available. So again, we'll go to transceivers and there are three packages available. Now, unlike the, a little bit like the MCP2515, MCP2515, you can put an SOIC, you can kind of put anything underneath, but two of these packages are incompatible with each other. Like you can't mix them, which is a little sad. So let's look at the bottom and I'll show you. So the SOIC is a standard large SOIC, which is, you know, classic. So there's the eight TDFN, which is two by three millimeters and this has a ground pad underneath it. And that means of course, you can't put anything underneath it because that ground pad short to whatever and you do really need that placement pad when you do your TDFNs. So I have to choose the SOIC and either the two by three TDFN or the three by three DFN, which are kind of almost the same thing. I'm kind of like a little confused why they have two nearly identical SMT packages. Like, yeah, like an SOIC, TESOP, and DFN, I can understand, but TDFN and DFN, I don't know, maybe some customer really wanted it. So SOIC, so let's see if any of these are in stock. I don't know if they're in stock. They're not in stock here, but you can, okay, I thought that word stuck, but they're not. So the SOIC is this one, the dash ESN. And let's see when we might have this in stock. So right, so these are gonna be in stock maybe in about a month. So that's a good choice to pick for the package. And then the other package, I ended up with the TDFN, and let's try this again at the cart. And this one also, some of them are gonna come in in 2021, the rest in 2022, I don't know, we'll find out if the dates get pulled in a little bit. Another thing is when you're doing the flip flop design, if you're doing like often the pins line up quite nicely, so like a T-SOP or a QFN, you can see how like all the lines kind of go out, spidery very easily. However, the only packages I could really could fit under the SOIC without having, here the V is on. The only package I could really fit under this SOIC and have it route out to get to the remaining pads without having V as everywhere was the two by three TDFN. If you have some like really small, if you have some really small chips, sometimes over the really wide SOIC, you can sometimes put it between the pads and like have it snake out. However, in this case, it really won't fit. So the only way to do it is sort of to do it like right angle in this way and then try to get like all the signals out through the side, which is, it's all right. Okay, so this is my guess. I think it's gonna work out. I think I'm gonna really get the SOIC version of this. I think for this chip, I'm going to end up mixing and matching between the two, but it's free to add a flip flop package onto your PCB design. So you might as well do it, right? Like it doesn't cost anything. The PCB, once you finish and tape out the PCB, you're done. So I'm gonna be doing this for like the next year probably, like until I can get chips again, because I don't know when that's gonna be. So you're gonna see a lot of designs that I do that have like SOIC and then a QFN or like a TSOP and like a TDFN underneath it. Whenever there's more than one package, I used to just go with like the smallest package or the cheapest package was the most convenient one, but that time's kind of not happening right now. So you're gonna see a bunch of these, including one of the designs that I finished last week for an EEPROM breakout. EEPROMs are available in a TSOP or SOIC. And so when I did the layout for the design, I added both. And that's the great search. All right. Good luck, everybody. Someone has some good comments here. Yeah. Not a question or anything. They just said, so much fun here. Early 90s, GPO RAM shortages at ATI, boards laid out for SRAM, DRAM, and VRAM, and through-hole PL, CC, SOIC, if it arrived, it got soldered. Absolutely. I mean, this is not the first time it's happened. And I was actually wondering, like when there was the shortage in 2009, right after a recession, there's always like this like terrible shortage. And I remember that the Arduino SMD came out because you couldn't get... Yeah. You couldn't get DIP chips. So there was a special version of the Arduino UNO that came out that had an SMD chip, because now they actually, I think, reverted back to having the DIP chip. But at the time, you couldn't, and you can kind of tell that they sort of just deleted the DIP and plugged in the QFN. I remember people thought like, this is the end of Arduino because they just want like a permanently soldered chip in. Yeah. No. There's other stuff that you should worry about Arduino. I've been coming out this week, but that ain't it. Oh, here it is. This is the one I was thinking of. That wasn't it, that ain't it. This was clever and I'm glad they did it. So this, hold on, let me show the image, because I thought this is interesting. Can I view an image? Can I view an image? Okay, so this image, you can see here, it's a flip flop design. Yeah. They have a QFP and a QFN, but you see it routes very nicely. So they probably started with, you know, the DIP was gone, so it was like, okay, you know, like I didn't design this, I'm just guessing. So they pulled the DIP out, put the QFN in, because DIPs, they're so thin, you actually can't really put any chips in between. And then they quickly were like, uh-oh, we can't even get QFNs, we can get QFPs. Okay, make the package, QFP. Now, if anyone ever learns what the official name for this technique is, I'd like to know, because I call it flip flopping, but I don't know. It sounds like dual sockets. It's not dual sockets. Is it dual sourceable? Well, it could be even one and two. I don't know. All right, and that's a great search. Thank you, everybody. Where in the world is that part I need? The great search. All right, so multi-sourcible design, perhaps. Okay, I like flip flopping. Nobody's come up with a better name than a flip flop. Yeah, I don't think anyone, I think that was normally associated with politics, but people don't even flip flop anymore. They just double down on the same dumb thing. They just straight up lie and then they double down. Everybody lies and double down, yeah. It's not double downing. I think it's flip flopping. It's like a flip flop hub. Poly padding. Poly padding, that's a good one. Although, I think it's probably like some trademark owned by some company that makes air packets for shipping. All right, so that's it for tonight. Last bit of news, I'm gonna put links in the chat. So, speaking of park shortages, we're only gonna have a few Aida boxes left. So, we open it up because we have some slots open since we're not shipping to Europe or the UK or Switzerland right now. So, we have a limited number. I'm gonna play a little song at the end. It's about three minutes and 33 seconds, exactly. Either that's significant and it means something or it doesn't. It's shipping soon. Yeah, so theoretically Aida box might be shipping in like. It's gonna ship in July. A couple weeks. So, I'm gonna play that song and everything but I'll also put in the links. It's just aidabox.com if you haven't been, you know. If you don't know what we're up to, that's what we're up to. That's what we've been working on. So, that's the big news. Play the jam. This week, we have all the regular shows except for Friday. That's right, Friday. Friday is not the deep dive but the rest of the week, the regular shows. Day off and then next Monday also, it's a little slow. We're gonna have to live. Monday, there's no shows on Monday, so. I know, but we're taking long. But your order may be delayed. Yeah, I mean everybody in the US is basically taking off Friday. Come on, man, just. If you made it this far, you could do it. If you made it this far. All right, so that's it. That's a lady of this week. I'm gonna play the song. Go get an Aida box. Bye, buddy. Bye.