 Every single week did you key any of you bringing it to great search lady to what is on the great search this week? Okay, so this week. I just showed off my Neo Trinky. It's a little samdi 21 base board. I still really like the samdi 21 It's a great chip. It's used, you know in Arduino circuit Python and Ross Zephyr Free RTOS, I mean like you can program the micro pattern you can program this in like so many different languages a really nice Solid chip and it can run with really minimal hardware. I thought it would be cool to Show all the different variants you can get on digikey how to select between them I don't think we've done a microcontroller yet. So I thought it would be this would be a good first microcontroller for the great search so let's Go over digikey and I'll do our search in okay, so Okay, so The same thing so there's the samdi 21 and then there's the samdi 51 the samdi 51 is the Cortex M4 family It's kind of a different chip although it shares a lot of the same peripherals There's also the same C and Sam L series which I won't be talking about the same L is lower power But it's very similar to the same D in many respects the same C is interesting I think the C stands for canvas It's a five volt version of the Sam series, but it doesn't have usb So just watch out for that like if people like oh my god, there's a sam see 21. Why don't you use that? It's five volt compatible. Yeah, but it doesn't have usb and one of the things I like about the samdi 21 Is it has usb? So let's look for at samdi 21 So, you know, of course we sell tons of boards that have the samdi 21 So, you know, you can get OLED breakouts whatever evaluation boards you'll get your feathers there, but we want the microcontrollers okay, so as usual, let's only look for active parts and Note that you know again some of them don't have usb Maybe I don't know but the thing that you really want to look for there's only like three different things that you can pick The size of the chip the amount of RAM and the amount of flash now in like most microcontrollers They're kind of tied together the lowest pins Usually also have the lowest flash and the lowest RAM and usually you can't independently pick flash and RAM like the more flash the more RAM You can't have something with like a ton of RAM a little bit of flash It doesn't work that way like you can they kind of go to lockstep So it's just as long as you're aware of that So you can pick the amount of RAM and program size Program flash you want from 32k up to 256k and you're pretty much paying for those three things You're gonna pay for more pins. You're gonna pay for more flash and you're gonna play for more RAM So, you know a common thing is you you design with the biggest version of the chip Figure out how much flash and memory your project took and then when you go into production You know, you just round up to the the closest one that will fit everything you need to do But having it all be pin compatible makes it really easy to move between the families and then of course if your product or your project Grows and increases you can always start bumping it up So that said another thing to look at is the package and device So, you know in my case I wanted the smallest physically smallest one So the WL CSP is are going to be literally the smallest one, right? This is this is tiny It's only two by two millimeters That said it only has 32k of flash or 64k of flash these two versions And that's that's not enough for me actually want to be able in circuit Python on these I need at least 32k of RAM and 256k of flash But so interesting to see micro chip You know, they they kind of always have like a teeny BGA version and then QFN and then go up to QFP I Kind of like QFN the most like if you had to pick one package. I Like QFNs. Why do I like QFNs? Well QFPs, you know, they have more pins, but they the pins get bent sometimes, especially doing rework I've always had like the most yield success with QFNs, but you know talk to your manufacturer to decide What package you want? So all the QFNs There is a bunch of different versions. There's the 21 G's the 21 E's Jays 18s and all those characters You know stand for different variables that you can adjust So the E when it says samd 21 E the E stands for 32 pin and then the G stands for 48 pin and the J Stands for 64 pins. That's the that's the biggest you can get at the samd 21 is a 64 pin chips, so, you know physically the larger they get usually the more more pins you want So you can pick the E subcode if you want just the smallest physically smallest QFN and then the digits afterwards like the 17 and 18 and 15 those stand for 15 the 15 those stand for how much flash and ram and Like I said the flash and ram on these chips kind of go in lock steps. So let me close my Actually, let me just open up the data sheet in the data sheet. You will see a Ordering information page and you'll want to use this this this again tells you Pin count is this letter code and then flash memory is the number code So in our case we want 18. We want the most flash memory and we want E for the smallest size so smallest Sorry, I'll scroll up smallest physically smallest but Memory-wise largest and then there's silicon revisions You know, I there's there's variants, but basically you're only gonna really see the a variant unless you there's I guess they made them for Some special customer or something But in our case the variants we don't really see any other options and then the dash MUT is for the package again QFN and QFP or BGA and then the package grading how it's packaged and The temperature grade and then whether it comes in tape or in tray. So but that doesn't matter for me as much So again, I want to have the 256 K of flash and I want the smallest number of IEL and It's what I got. So I've got a couple different options the MFT, you know, you're all samd 21e 18s But they come in MFT MU MF MUT and MF, right? So you're like, what's the difference go back to the datasheet and you can quickly tell, okay? They're all M. So that's QFN and then the you or the F just stands for whether it's 40 to 85 or 40 to 125 basically is it industrial or is it commercial temperature level? You probably don't care or at least I don't care, right? It doesn't matter to me whether I'm getting industrial commercial temp So that's one I would basically put in, you know, okay Let's see that the pricing at 1,000 pieces And I just picked the cheapest right which in this case happens to be that the commercial Temperature range tray This is the one I like the MU the MU series But again, you can also get the MUT which is like, you know Basically the same price. It's like six cents more The nice thing about this version is it comes on Tape and reel which you might be beneficial for you depending on your manufacturing Our machines take tray or tape very well. They don't like tube. So just you know, if you go into manufacturing just Check with your manufacturer to see how they want the chips package But that's it the MU series. So this is the chip. I like I use this in the Gemma's the trinkets Neo trinky This ship is awesome. It's really easy to use It's easier to load it with our UF2 boot loader and there's boot loader protection Once you put the boot loader protection, it's pretty much, you know nearly indestructible It's very rare that we've seen people frazzle their boot loader It's nice and solid and then you can load Arduino or circuit Python and you know for the size and price It's quite powerful. It's 48 megahertz 256k of flash 32k of RAM so good enough to run some basic circuit Python code or quite a bit of Arduino or rust or Zephyr code That's my great search at SanD21E18