 The great search brought to you by the key and a to prove lady to user powers of engineering every single week to find the Things that you need it's tough to find things because it's a global part shortage lady What is this week's great search? Okay, this week's great search is you know I had a couple great searches where we did you know alternative searches and then I went to like oh I'm like like trying to find some chips and stuff Then one design with and now I'm back to alternatives because I'm seeing like the second wave of part shortage is where I Believe that there are parts available, but they're not being allocated necessarily and so you know We have a lot of parts that we've ordered and the lead times are still a year and I'm actually seeing them stretch out to two years You know as I was looking at like a MOSFET that you know, we use the DMG 30 23 or 5 I think it's a nice little slot 23 P-FET for a lot of our boards that we use is like a little you know ideal diode type thing and You know it's a MOSFET, you know, it's like hey most generic common thing But it has 89 week lead time and so there's a lot of parts that are again common that are hard to get We got a bunch of shipments, but it might be a while to get in our next shipment. So this week's the great search is about the AP 2 1 1 2 K 3 point 3 which is our like super favorite low dropout regulator We use it in like everything We used to use the mick 5 2 2 5 which is also still a great regulator and we use that on a lot of boards The AP 2 1 1 2 has very low dropout and also can do 500 600 milliamps of current Easily from up to 6 volts. It's you know great. It's very stable. It doesn't need a bypass cap It's a great little regulator and once we started using it on our boards like our feather boards, for example I'll use the AP 2 1 1 2 We're like well like instead of stocking, you know, that's cheaper than the mick 5 5 2 2 5 We don't need that 16-volt input for all our stomach UT boards. Let's just move everything to the AP 2 1 1 2 That makes manufacturing and stocking easier because we only had to stock 1 LDO We've really only used 1 LDO for pretty much anything that needs to be point 3 volts And that's totally awesome as long as you can get that part Which we can no longer guarantee and we use a lot of them I go through over a thousand a day of this LDO because it's again used in like everything we use in all our breakouts and our feather boards So we're not out, but we're worried that we might run out before the next shipment because well What we're seeing is you'll get a ship date and that date will start getting bumped and bumped and bumped You know, you thought you're gonna get it in June You're actually not gonna get it's August and then it goes to November and then it goes to January of next year And so we needed to find Something alternative that I could you know to have as a backup so that we wouldn't be like stuck because The the regulator is good for up to 500 600 milliamps, which we definitely need for like our feather ESP 32 boards They can use a lot of current so all our feather boards I want to keep that regulator, but for our breakouts, we don't need 500 600 milliamps A lot of them can get away with 50 or 100 or even less very few even need more than 100 most of our sensors are very low power You know, they sip power and you know low quiescent currents is not that important As long as a dropout is low enough and it's pin compatible. It'll work just fine. So Today what I'm going to try to do is Find an alternative and one that has a lot of stock so that I can get enough that you know in stock it so we can keep all of our stem IQ T boards in stock and Let our AP 2-1-1-2 sit for the feather board. So it's like maybe if we divide the stock up We won't end up using a thousand a day because we'll secure that You know hard to get part for the boards that really need it the boards that don't need it We'll use something that's a little less capable, but hopefully about the same price So let's that's the that's the story But definitely like when I saw that, you know, our purchaser would be like, hey, we need all for this I was like, oh goodness. I gotta do this immediately. So because you know again We use a thousand a day and if we went out of this part like we pretty much grind to a halt So let's find an alternative. So if we can stay in business Okay, so the part that we're talking about is The AP 2-1-1 2k and yes, it's out of stock You know, there'll be some, you know, 16 I can get in like two months. They might be a little bit more In October if I need a whole bunch I'm looking for You know, maybe 6,000 come in October, but I'm not gonna get the rest until 2023 can't wait that long because again I use about a thousand a day. So let's look at this. So again, this is a 3.3 regulator lead time 80 weeks exciting But let's find something that's similar enough again, the quiescent current isn't that important to me and the current outputs on that important We just have to keep in mind the dropout. I want about, you know, point two to point four volts Again, the current we're using is so low. It doesn't matter, but it does have to be low dropout I can't use like an LT 117 with like a massive one volt dropout It's just I need something very light because sometimes you'll give it 3.3 volts and you want about 3.3 volts on the other side So it's 3.3 volts output. It's a one fixed positive and I want it to be active. I Want it to be surface mount and it should I Want to enable but I'm not a hundred percent sure that that isn't another name as well And then the reason I'm not picking the supplier device is because thought 25 is the same as thought 23-5 and I think like sometimes the package names are kind of like, you know, they're split between them So I want to be able to make sure that I can select all the options and again Output current is an important quiescent current PSS are they're all gonna be about the same and then protection features I'm not too worried about because almost all of them have the same features Okay, so The output Input maximum I do want it to be at least Let's just say five volts But it can go up, you know, so whatever But definitely it can't be less than that because I need they definitely need to have all my boards take five volt input then for the package again, there's a lot of Sot 23 is there's Sot 25, Sot 25, Sot 25, Sot 25, Sot 25, Sot 25, DC, there's like a huge number so I'm going to try to Select all of them and try to do my best to get all the different names So the Sot 25 I got those and then also the Sot 25s. That's another name. That's the thing that really you got to watch out for I think They might also be called SC 74s Yeah, SC 74s are also the same thing again This is a this is a tricky thing because you want to you want to get any package that's compatible Without getting the ones that are not Okay Next up so the current output. I don't want anything with less than a hundred milliamps out Because I just feel like if I'm gonna get a regulator I don't want to have to some chips wanna, you know have a hundred milliamp peak like You know the VL 53s Actually, those use a 2.8 volt, but like there are some sensors that use yeah, they can have a little bit of a pipe It's a spike in current Let's see some of the light sensors, especially because they they put a burst of IR out So I think a hundred milliamps is my minimum. I really want something that's in stock right now So which is gonna takes it from a thousand to 100 And then the dropout is you know dropouts are kind of calculating a weird way because they're like it depends on the output of the regulator So I think what I'm gonna do is I'm going to Check that on You know the board itself and and see what's up Okay, so the next step is I do want to kind of try to keep it to about the same price and The price I pay for the AP 2-1-1-2s On did you think is like about 10 10 ish sense maybe 12 cents? I you know, there's right. There's always gonna be regulators are 75 cents apiece I can't afford that because the boards I'm putting them on They need to be affordable. They need to be low-cost. I just need a basic regulator I don't need you know the end all be all And then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna look at the combination of the price and stock numbers So again, I can't really Go with something that's only 6,000 pieces in stock because like that's six days It's not worth it for me to do a revision if it's only six days worth of stock So I'm gonna look at is the ones that are like ooh like a hundred and ninety two like that's you know If I use a thousand a and I get a hundred ninety thousand that takes me to the end of the year And so I can at least float my current inventory that long So let's look at the AP to zero zero 2k which actually sounds kind of great because it's like similar to the AP 2-1-1 2k It's a smaller Let's see it's this one. It's fixed. It has a higher voltage input usually that means the dropouts a little higher It looks like it is a little higher, but it might be okay. The quiescent's also a little bit higher Again not not uncommon, but it has the overcurrent over temperature and reverse polarity. So let's look at the data sheet So yeah, this is a standard Regulator has pretty low LDO one thing that I will say that just to watch out for is it does have a bypass pin So the regulator I use now does not require a bypass pin either has some built-in capacitance or it's just Stabilized or it's compensated inside so the only thing to watch out for is This if you don't if I'm using it in a board with that that doesn't have that bypass cap spot because no board It currently exists has that that I've designed I started to make sure that it's not it won't go unstable and The noise isn't going to be too high. So you can check through the data sheet because they will have higher noise That said the higher noise might be the same as the current regulator. I have and as long as you know, that's true I'm good to go and the other thing to watch out for some of these regulators are not stable with Ceramic capacitors. I've seen that I've seen some that are like I they need high ESR Capacitors on the output, which is like really tricky because you think like oh like lower ESR is better Yes, except when that extra resistance adds a little bit of delay a little bit of stability to your regulator So just make sure that it can use ceramic caps. It's it's unusual these days to not see that But you can like Google for ESR Looks like here. They're actually like lower ESR is fine and there's no stability and then Sometimes you can search for ceramic if they don't mention it then it's it's probably fine, but Yeah, they don't have anything About electrolytics. So yeah, this looks like it'll probably be just fine stable with ceramic caps So this is one option, but again want to watch that noise see what that's like The rest of these there's not that many Then there's this one the AP 7 380 So that one has a hundred twenty thousand stocks. That's a good option But I didn't like this high voltage dropout. So the voltage dropout is 1.5 volts, which is like way too high You know, I need it to be the other one was 0.4 at 600 milliamps Which means it's gonna be like 50 millivolts at, you know, 100 milliamps or so I could deal with like, you know, maybe again like 0.2 or whatever 0.3, but 1.5 is is Right out. So not gonna look at the AP 7380 The next one that has a lot of stock is this one the AP 7358 54 it's a little bit more expensive now. We're getting into 17 cents compared to, you know, 8 cents or whatever But this one is 150 milliamp output Very low quiescent current, which is kind of impressive and the dropout's okay. It's, you know, 0.35 And this one That's a load the data sheet this one doesn't need the bypass cap You know, it's so it's maybe low noise. That's pretty good accuracy Range up to 5.5 volts. This is also probably a good option. I think for this one the AP 73.54 and The AP 2202K. I will just check the noise and the dropout and compare it For like about 50 to 100 milliamps. How does it compare to the AP 211 2k? It could be that for some higher current breakouts I would still stick with it AP 211 2k because I know it works. It's good at the higher Output current but for like a BME 280, you know, it's cool to swap it out It really doesn't matter what regular use all that all them are gonna act the same And I would just do a revision And until you know, I get another gigantic shipment of the regular I'm looking for I would just swap it out You know, I'm starting to do more of these dynamic swaps Definitely like MOSFETs. I can't get diodes. I can't get I'll just find the equivalent Part that has the same specifications Swapping in I'll just make a revision notes but I won't necessarily separate the stock because if the part is really equivalent enough and it passes test it won't It's not gonna make a difference and a regular like this As long as the noise is within reasoning the dropouts about the same again, you're not gonna notice much difference for low current uses So this time I'm gonna try to get through this part shortage being flexible and Creative so those are the two two chips. I recommend. I think this one probably is gonna be a better fit I'm gonna get some samples of both and try them out That's great church