 And welcome to Slady Aida. Hey everybody and welcome to my desk. It's me, Lady Aida. I'm here at my desk doing all sorts of electronics this week. But first off, do we have any news or updates? A little bit. I'll be doing some updates throughout the week, but apparently people showing electronics on Facebook is now hate speech. Our show and tell is not allowed on Facebook. We got a notice that said it violates their community standards on hate speech. So on our show and tell we have a person who showed some LEDs on a wheelchair. Someone modified a kid's toy so it made different sounds. Obviously it's not hate speech. Obviously they made a mistake. However, this is the world we live in. So we've reported hate speech. They've done absolutely nothing. So this is either someone targeting us and falsely reporting or just regular old Facebook doing Facebook dodges, which is usually the worst thing. The future is just chat, GPT talking to itself. Yeah, so if you tune in live to our shows and you don't see them on there, this is the reason why. So hopefully you'll be able to see just Lady Aida on here. This is not hate speech. Let's do some electronics. Okay. Well, I've got some cool stuff going on. So let's go to my desk and I'll start showing stuff. Okay, hold on. Let me just make sure I have my time check going on. Okay. So let's put this away and I'll show this maybe a little bit later. So first up, I'm doing some more prototype testing and we've got our, we showed off a couple of weeks ago this rotary encoder, iSquared C converter like reader thingy where you have this rotating clicky knob wheel and some buttons. And now instead of having to actually read every single tactile switch and the rotary encoder with your interrupts, you can, oh my God, focus. You can use the ATtiny816 on here that will convert it to iSquared C and I made a little demo to show it off. So one of the things is whenever we sell something in the Adafruit shop, what are the things that we're kind of known for? Well, at the time we were really known for, now it's not as uncommon. We actually show a demo of the thing working on the product page, which is like, at the time was amazing because usually like you've got maybe some text and maybe like a photo. We actually have like animated gifts, well they're MP4s but they're like animated gifts that show without audio and like within six seconds what the thing does and gives you a sense of its functionality. And so I like to have these little animated demos because they give people a sense of scale and how fast things react and how you're expected to use it. So here is the final PCB for the A&O rotary encoder in Adafruit Black and the encoder soldered in. And then I have it connected here to a seven segment LED backpack. This is mine that I have sockets in because I was swapping out different LED colors. And then I plugged this into this, I have a QDPie RP2040 and some Arduino code on here. And then I just rotate this and you can see the number goes up and then it goes back down. And the library I wrote whatever like a dozen years ago for this thing works well enough that it even handles negative numbers. And then when you press the select buttons it says cell A and then up, sorry this is left, up, right and down. A little bit, it's a little bit blown out but you get the sense of it. So it's, you know, this is something that we can demo in six seconds and gives people an ideal, okay, you've got five buttons and you got this ordering encoder and here you can see it's got STEMI QT. So we'll, you know, our videographer comes in Monday, Wednesday, Fridays. So tomorrow I'm gonna hand this over to him and I'll show him how to demo it and we'll get somebody with much nicer nails than I hopefully to hold this and twist it around. So that'll be cool. And the demo code for products goes into the library that this uses. So this uses the C cell library. So, you know, I've already committed the example code because people are always like, I want the code that's, like I used to just write it for myself like I've just scribbled something, oh, light up this LED and like swirl this thing. And then people are like, no, no, I want that code that's on the demo page. So now I commit it to the library always. So one ordering encoder is good. So this was my port, basically. We got, we actually got a user contribution to add ordering encoder support for the AT Tiny. Eight, one, six in the Seesaw peripheral library, which was really wonderful. Cause I was gonna do it, I never got, I never finished it. And so somebody committed like 80% of the code and then I went in over the last week and I finished it up. And so you can get iSport C to order encoders. And then I was like, well, you know, once I got this done, and originally the code was in the SAM DO9. But again, the SAM DO9 is like very hard to get still. And, you know, I wanted something that's through your five-volt compatible. There's a lot of reasons why the AT Tiny ended up being a better choice. Easier to program, a lot of things are better for it. So the thing is, once you have one ordering encoder, you're like, well, what if you had four ordering encoders? So this is a quad encoder reader and this is a really old design. I just, again, never got around to testing and finishing it because I couldn't get this chip. This is the AT Tiny 817. The seven series has more pins. It's, oops, sorry. It is, I think, 24 pins and the other was like 20, something like that. It just has a couple more and you actually need those extra four pins because we have two pins for each ordering encoder. We have one for the interrupt output. We have one programming pin, power and ground pin, neopixel pin, and then don't forget each ordering encoder also has a switch. You can see many encoders have a select switch when you press them. So the demo I wrote, so this is a Metro mini running Arduino code and it's connecting to here over I squared C and then reading and writing data to this device. So the first demo I wrote is just when you, it's kind of a nice simple demo when you turn the knob, the color changes on here. So you can see it's like blue and then it changes to green and orange and red. So the reverse mount neopixels, I'll admit, you know, they're not really visible. And the reason I put them on here and there was a little bit of a debate that I had and I was asked Mr. Ladiator for advice and he said, no, no, no, this is worth it doing because there are encoders that have translucent bodies like this. And then when you have a neopixel that glows through, they look extremely cool and you can even get translucent knobs. You can even see they're a little lifted because you know, you might have an LED underneath. This is reverse mount, so it's flush, but it's designed so you could have even service mount LEDs underneath. And it looks really, really cool. And like it's totally worth it. And you know, the neopixels aren't too expensive. They're like five cents a piece. So, you know, add four of them and on the off chance are using the translucent knob encoders. Now I've actually tried to stock these translucent knob encoders for like three years. And like I keep going back and forth with like Top Up which is the company that sells these and it's been a little bit like, hey, can I just like get these? And they're like, no, we don't make that version anymore and back and forth. Anyways, I will eventually. But so far this is pretty cool. Maybe I'll make a version where the LEDs are not reverse mount. They're pointing down to get like underlighting effect. That's pretty easy, right? You just change the package and you know, it'll flip upside down and I would just fabricate that version as well. That's the quad encoder. And then some other stuff I'm poking at is this NeoKey tester. So, this NeoKey tester is for the new Chuck breakout and this is a low profile switch and maybe let's go to the computer and I'll show the difference between the MX and the Chuck. So, in the shop we have what's called Cherry MX switches and these are like the most common switches used in keyboards. They have like bazillion of different types of keycaps available from like we legendable to clear, to like windowed, you know, whatever, to, you know, kind of flat, sorry, to DSA style. But the body of an MX switch is still kind of tall. The keycaps are like fairly tall. So, if I go to like we have a Cherry MX tester, you can see, actually this is not a good demonstration. So, these, these kale switches. Okay, so when you see these kale switches, you can see they're like chunky, right? They're like, you know, they're big keys and they're very tall because these are kind of an original style design and shape. And what happened is I guess people were like, oh, worry, we like these MX's but we want something that's slimmer. And so, kale came up with a style called Chuck and Chuck keys look like this. So, they're much lower profile. They're much slimmer but the trade-off is that the footprint isn't the same. They do have sockets available but the socket footprint isn't the same and the keycaps run the same. So, it's like a totally new system and everything's a little bit more expensive because there's not as much competition. There's like, they're the only ones who make the Chuck and so like you're gonna pay a little bit more but a lot of people do like this super slim low profile. So, we have these neokey boards that are socket with neopixel breakouts for the MX but I wanted to make a version for the Chuck. So, I had to actually make it a little bit bigger. So, let's go back to the overhead. Oh, sorry. Go back to the overhead. So, these are a little bit, the locations of these holes are a little different and actually the board's a little bit longer too because this socket sits up much higher and so to give clearance for the headers have to make it a little bigger. And this is the tester and the way the tester works is that there's pogos that go between here and here and then they make a connection and when they make a connection I detect that connection through the diode and then I make the neopixel glow. So, here's the test and it passes. So, if it wasn't pressed through correctly or something was missing the neopixel wouldn't glow. So, if I pressed only half on, you see the neopixel doesn't glow I actually have to press it all the way on. Okay, so that's the tester. So, I just did this. Actually the same tester as the neokey but I just wanted to show like, sometimes I don't have a called drop and beep. I don't have literally something that beeps. It's just like, oh, you know, do you see the neopixel? Great, you know, you're done testing and here's how to come on a panel. So, come on, like little grapes, delicious. Okay, so that's the stuff I've been working on today. Getting this tester ready so we can put this into the shop. All right, so next up let's go to the great search. The great search brought to you by did you keep native fruit every single week? They did use their power of engineering to help you as you find the things you wanted. Did you key.com related to what is the great search of the week this week? Okay, this week's great search is a part that did not survive the great chip shortage of 21, 22. It's the TCS 34725. So, let's go to the computer and I'll show that we used to stock this part. This was our color sensor. I really, really like this sensor. So, it's a six pin chip, it required three volts but it had an interrupt output and it had red, green, blue and clear color sensing, IR cut, I squared C interface. It was fairly easy to use and it looked really cool. It had this very beautiful sensor with interleaved red, green, blue and clear sensors. So, we used it in a ton, ton, ton of projects. Pretty much anything that had color sensing we used it, we made a flora version. But sadly, this chip did not, again, like I said, survive the great chip shortage. It is discontinued and I even was gonna make a STEMI QT version and it's like, just as I was designing it, the chip got discontinued, was no longer available. So sad. So, here it is. It came in two families, the 34725 and 34727. Both are discontinued and I really like having a color sensor. I think it's a great way for people to, you can detect a little color Lego block is or if you're doing like Rubik's Cube stuff or just pick up colors from around the world and like you integrate your project, we had an umbrella that you touched it to something and it would turn the umbrella that color that you touch it. So you could touch it to like a yellow cab here in New York and it would turn yellow or a red fire hydrant would turn red or green tree would turn green. Very cool project. We might actually remake that project again because it was so old and some of those parts are unavailable like this one. But I would like to have another color sensor. So let's check out what Digi-Key has for color sensors. So because I don't know at all what the land of color sensors looks like right now, I'm just gonna click on the whole category. So there's only 84 parts. I remember everything including obsolete components, are there. So what I'm gonna do is first select only the active stuff and you see really not that many color sensors available which I think is interesting. I think there was like a trend to have color sensors for phones and TV so they could do like ambient color sensing. And I think like whatever happened that got changed and like it doesn't get used as much anymore. So looking at some of these, some of these are like they're a light sensor but it only takes like one color like this only connects, detects green. It's got like a green coating, this one detects red and this one detects blue. So these are analog. They're just like a diode that's like tinted so it only senses that color. I'm assuming. Let's see, let's actually look at the data sheet. Yeah, it's just anode and cathode. So it's just a diode. I don't want that. I want something with I squared C. Gonna have UART too but I'd like something as close as possible to that TCS. Okay, we have a couple options here. Not a ton though. Like I said, 16 options. Some of these look like they're not even really stocked. So let's just say normally stocking and not marketplace because there's like a module or two I don't want. Okay, so 11 options. So some of these are like, there's two kinds of light sensors because I've actually made breakouts for some of these. So like the AS7341 is very cool. You'll notice it's like, whoa, it's like 10 bucks. Why is it 10 bucks? It's a multi-spectral sensor. It actually has like nine different diodes not just red, green, blue. I want something that's a price comparative to the TCS. And that was like a buck or two per piece. So I'd like to get something similar in pricing. So sorting by price, there's a couple good options. So one is the Vemmel 6040. So the Vemmel 6040 has a couple things going for it. It has red, green, blue, and W just a clear, like white light. But it doesn't have an interrupt pin, which I don't like. I prefer to have an interrupt pin and there's no address select pin either. And that was one of the things that the TCS did have and was quite nice. You could change the address from like 0x29 to 0x39, I think it had one address select. So that's okay, but not amazing. Vemmel 3228. Similar, it's got clear, red, green, blue, and IR. So it's got a couple light elements in there. That's nice, but which I prefer that has at least four, but it doesn't have again address select and it doesn't have interrupt output. So I looked around, there's this one, which was kind of funky. So this one, this one looks pretty good. It has red, green, blue, clear, and IR, and interrupt, and SCL. It doesn't have an address select, but it does have interrupt, which is kind of cool. And it has the clear and IR. One's on 3.3 volts and it's from Everlight. I'll say I've had like fair good luck with Everlight and it's fairly inexpensive. That's under a dollar. And then this one, I looked at this one and I just saw the package and I was like, oh, I don't wanna deal with that. Like that package looks way too small and complicated. It's like chip scale. The BH, so the AS72652 is another expensive one. It's like a spectral sensor. I don't need something this nice. And then there's just the AS7341. So one thing that I do like about the Vemmel 3328 and the BH1749, which is another one, is that there's like a lot in stock and the price is fairly good. It's like again, under $2. So this one, I ended up going with this one. You know, this is my pick, although I might change because it didn't have clear, but it did have IR. So that's kind of good. So you can do IR detection, M detection. And it had an address select. I really like an address select in the interrupt. It for me is kind of like key. And I think it makes it worth it that it doesn't have just a generic ambient clear light input. Because honestly, most people, you know, you might have a separate light sensor just for clear and you know, maybe you can like sum the red, green and blue and that will get you like basically white light anyways. So this was my pick. Nothing was really exactly the same, but I really liked the stock numbers. The pricing was good and I liked the interrupt pin and the address pin. And for me, since there wasn't everything, something that had everything, this was the closest. So this is my pick for the great search. That's a great search. Where in the world is that part of the search? All right, thanks for joining us this weekend. We very much appreciate it. We'll see everybody online throughout the week. We have a bunch of exciting shows. We'll see which ones get banned from Facebook. So what do we live in? Yeah, actually, you know, a fun side story when I was helping to run, make magazine. I think I was a senior editor or something like that. I didn't have, I didn't have like any final say with like the print magazine. I did a lot online. I could, you know, I could do, but in, you know, print, the idea at the time was to get into as many places as they could. Yeah. And I think it was banned from Joanne's. Joanne's. Yeah. Joanne's because it had women who, they had a Burning Man project. And I think they, they totally fine project and everything. I think they just happened to have like swimsuits on. I thought it was, it was a speech and bitch. And I thought it was like the word bitch was on the cover. Maybe, but, but they had like power tools. It was women with power tools. And I think that was very silly. Yeah. Power tools and Joanne's fabric and whatever crafts didn't like it. And they, you know, the team was like, oh, well, you know, that's too bad. We'll just, we'll keep finding places to have the magazine. I'm like, no, the next cover should say banned at Joanne's. And we should like turn it into a thing. So. It was, it was. Yeah, it was. Yeah. And so we'll, we'll probably end up doing that. So. Getting from Facebook. Yeah. Some people are like, oh, it's because you're like this. And some people are like, it's like you're like, it's like both sides think it's like. Yeah. It's because you're capitalist. It's because you're socialist. Yeah. Anyways. Yeah. So it's a little bit of a bus anyways. We'll see, we'll see up the cops are here. Okay, we gotta go. Bye everybody. Facebook cops are here. Yeah, bye. Later, buddy.