 And welcome to this lady, Ada. Hey everybody, and welcome to my desk. It's Sunday night. It's engineer o'clock. It's time to see what I've been hacking on. You got some samples, then we're gonna do great search, and we gotta do a thing later tonight, so we're gonna make this a very efficient show. This is gonna be a breezy one, but I still have some cool stuff to show. Oh, we always do. Okay, so first off, let's go to the overhead. I'm gonna show off some cool samples I got. So, I just got, you know, it's like I got some funky weird things. So this is, I've never actually, I mean, I've kind of heard of these. I've never seen them before. So this is a rotary encoder. So it's like clicky clicky, and it's encoder, but it's hollow. You know, I see people who are trying to make, you know, rotary encoder with OLEDs in them, and it's like, how do you do that? Well, you could do it like this, because the part that rotates, you know, it would be the outer ring, and then you could have electronics come through and have a display or something. So this is kind of neat. I think these are used in automobiles, and this was sold as a replacement for a car, like a knob thing for like selecting like AC or fan. So you got this, that's one sample. That's actually weird stuff. There's a lot of like parts sourcing and redesigning this week. So I didn't do a lot of new hardware. And here's another. This one is smoother. It's not clicky, but it's also a rotary encoder. But you know, I think I'm stocking these. Maybe make a breakout for them or something. Okay, and then next up, oh, and then I got like a tall one. They're all kind of similar. But also, you know, this one's very clicky, but also rotary encoder. But then again, you can imagine the 3D print, you know, this stays still, and then there's a 3D printed part that clamps onto here, clips onto, you know, there's these notches. So it'll stay in place. And then above it, you can have, you know, a thing that doesn't rotate, that has a display. So, I mean, you'll probably see this soon in some known Pedro project that we come up with. Yes. And then I got this joystick. So, you know, one of the things I really like the modern like, you know, switch PSP style joysticks, but they tend to be, they're actually digital. They're not analog anymore, which is actually the right thing to do because analog potentiometers get scratchy. They, you know, they get worn out from like people constantly numb them. So if you actually went and got replacement, like I think the PSP Vita and the Switch, the potentiometers are not analog. They're digital to use a magnetic, they use a magnet and they use like a 3D magnetic sensor to detect the motion, which means that they don't drift as much and they don't get scratchy because it's very hard to replace the joystick. And of course they used a ton. So it's nice about this is this is a potentiometer version, but it's got that nice soft rubbery feel to it. And, you know, you got the six pins for the two analog potentiometers. So there's some couple, couple fun samples, mechanical samples that I got. Another thing I got that you'll see coming soon to this shop is for those who remember, we had a, you know, I did this revision where all of our solderless breadboards, like I really wanted like a really nice one. So I spent like months sourcing different breadboards that had clips that were really easy to plug and unplug boards from. Like they're what Phil B likes to call buttery smooth. And they also come with a metal plate, basically just upgrading, premiumizing the breadboards because, you know, even though they were more expensive, they were well within the price range. I was comfortable selling at the same price. So all of our breadboards got updated. One of the things I always really liked was particle had really beautiful breadboards in their kits that were like this really crisp white color. And I really liked that the ground line was black, not blue, not that like there's anything wrong with having blue, but it's like, you know, black is ground, red is power. So like, why not? So I got samples this week of a new breadboard. You can see the color. It's, it's much, well, it's hard to tell here, but it is, it's a, it's a crisper white color. And then the power lines are, I think the printing is much clearer and it's black on the ground line, but it also comes with a metal plate. But as otherwise, you know, it's a, should be compatible like this plugs into this if you want to extend it. And then it's still got that, you know, the buttery smooth activation for like plugging stuff in and removing it. So nice. So it'll be coming soon. So I just got the samples today and I'm gonna approve of them and then we can put them in the shop. So that's cool. Hold on, let me put this back. Okay. And then last thing on my desk, the thing that I started on, I didn't get to finish today because I went out for a nice long walk instead is the ESP32 Itzy Bitsy. You know, I've tested by hand, it's ready now for manufacturer. So I have to actually make the tester. So I'm recycling this RP2040 tester board, but instead of having it programmed by microcontroller, I'm going to use a Raspberry Pi because that's the easy, I've actually like written code to program an ESP32 direct form a microcontroller and you can do it, but there's nothing as efficient, like it's actually just not as efficient as using a Raspberry Pi running ESP tool because ESP tool can do this, there's this compression and like, you know, instead of using the ROM bootloader, it uploads a little stub that allows you to send compressed data over and then uncompresses it. So it ends up being much faster and also it does stuff like it checks, you can check like, Oh, is this flash already written and then it don't erase, if it's already been erased, it's a lot smarter. And so, you know, I don't mind using a Raspberry Pi here and then having the, well, this has the wrong cable, but having a USB cable, you plug it in. And then of course you can upload directly with the ESP32 bootloader and have it self test all the pin pairs. That's what's going on underneath here. And also does a little bit of analog checking just to make sure the power and ground lines are good. But I think that's going to be the next tester I do. And hopefully we'll get that in the store soon with the new ESP Pico Mini modules that we talked about last week. And then let's go to my computer and I'll just show a quick. Another thing is I've, you know, I'm doing a lot of redesigns just because parts are unavailable or I'm like, you know what, you know, might as well just do revisions that I've been meaning to do. So this is the 1.8 inch TFT, which is, you know, one of the first products we manufactured, part number 358. This is incredibly early. Like at the time there was, you could not buy TFTs on a breakout board. Like this was like very weird. This was a screen that I think was used in either like really low cost digital cameras or like really low cost like key chain photo viewers. And we found a supplier that would sell us just the display and then we like made a breakout board for it. So it's really early and like you can even kind of tell from like it's got the old dataFoot logo, like really old dataFoot logo. And like the, it's the cell screen's a little bit like funky and you can also tell like this is a hand soldered version that like I think we photographed. Anyways, very, very long time ago. And also it doesn't have like, it doesn't have the nice gold mounting holes and it doesn't have any text here. Like I, you know, it was, at the time we actually made a difference if you had text only on one side, it was a little cheaper. So I was like, you know what, let's give this a little bit of a refresh. So one of the things I did this weekend is, you know, I updated it, now has the new logo. The text is nice and wider. I put the, you know, nice plated mounting holes. I updated all our packages, like the SD card package. You know, I've tweaked it to improve it a little bit. And then I added an iSpy port, which I'm going to try to do to all the TFT breakouts. And that basically means, you know, much like the, you know, the 1.69 I know for sure, you know, having this connector and then you could, you can put the TFT anywhere and you can plug it in. And I'm working on making like adapters for like, you know, Raspberry Pi and QT Pi and Feather and stuff. But basically just, instead of wiring, basically, you know, trying to have like an SPI TFT version of STEMI QT, except of course STEMI QT is easy because it's like power ground and two wires, four wire, so easy. Whereas SPI is like, it's, you know, this is an 18 pin connector. And I think it's 18 and it's, there's, there's just like, you know, you need so many GPIO because like with e-Inks, you need the busy pin, the reset pin, the memory CS, the TFT CS, the ECS, like there's a lot going on. So, you know, using the same connector that DF Robot is, you know, went with, I was like, well, you know what, I like sticking with existing standards. So adding that port to the back of all these displays will make it easy. And I just, for a year there, I couldn't get any displays. So I kind of like stopped doing display stuff, but I'm getting displays again. So I was like, you know what, time to refresh. Maybe we do some of those old designs to add that port and it'll make it easy for people to plug in our displays. And you don't have to, you know, hand wire everything. So that, that's, it's coming back, it's not over yet. But that's kind of what I've been engineering. It's a little bit, a little bit of everything. All right, let's do the great search. Okay. The Great Search brought to you by Digikey and Ada Fruit. Every single week, Lady Ada uses her power of engineering to help you find things on digikey.com. Lady Ada, what is a great search of the week? This week? Okay. So this week, it's actually a lesson I learned about finding alternative parts for obsolete components. We just always read the PCN, even though you might think, like, oh, you take the suggestion of what the alternative component is. It's always good to read the PCN. Sometimes there's like little hints inside of it. So this week, one of the parts that I had to find alternative for is this SPIFRAM chip. So let's go to the computer and I will shut off. Okay, so SPIFRAM is like, I think one of the underrated chip technologies out there because we, every week, we have somebody who's like, you know, even like last week, somebody's like, I really need to overclock my RP2040 or my, you know, a 751 because I'm trying to stream data from an accelerometer to an SD card and I'm running into it. I'm not able to stream the data. I need to be faster. And what they don't realize is that it's not frequency based. It's not how fast the processor is. What you're dealing with is you're writing data to NOR flash like SPIFLASH or on a micro SD card. And when you do that, you have to erase blocks and you have to write blocks and that can take hundreds of milliseconds. And so, you know, you can stream data to SD cards by like being really careful with like internal memory management and then you buffer the data and you write the data. In fact, a lot of times when you look at how digital cameras work, they'll have a big chunk of SRAM. When you take a photo, it has to stream the data to the SRAM and then it writes that data to the SD card. Because again, the SD card can take hundreds of milliseconds to erase and write flash blocks. Now you can like pre erase the blocks and there's like stuff you can do. But basically if you're trying to stream data to non-volatile storage, EPROM and flash memory have this issue of like, you know, block erase, block writing, taking a long time. Whereas EPROM does not have this issue. EPROM is instantaneous. It basically has the speed of SRAM with the non-volatility of flash memory. But it's a little bit more expensive. So like this is, you know, 256 kilobytes, but you know, it has the price cost of, you get multiple times what it would be if it was nor flash. But that's the trade-off, right? You know, you wanna have very fast data, use this. So, you know, I do recommend people who especially when they're doing like data logging in like model rockets or UAVs, anywhere where there's a really high chance of damage. Like you wanna write the data and you wanna store it, but there's also a chance that thing could explode and like you wanna be able to recover the data or like power gets cut very quickly. Or for extreme low power usage. Cause again, you don't have to, you don't have to have that power spike to erase blocks or write blocks. And unlike SRAM, you don't have to provide power console. You can cut the power after you've written the data. So it definitely has a really cool use case. But anyways, this chip that we use is no longer available. It's obsolete. So, you know, this is the part that we were purchasing, four megabit, SPI, 40 megahertz and eight SOP. Unavailable. You know, again, this is chip shortage. A lot of things are going obsolete. Older lines are getting dropped. And so, you know, you go down to substitutes and there is a substitute and it is in stock and I may still use this part. But what's interesting is, well, first off, it's a little bit more expensive and I also have to get a couple samples and make sure that not only is it pin compatible, but also that the commands used to read and write data. Like there is a standard called Genek for SPI data, but there's often extensions to it. Not every company uses the same extensions. You know, we've dealt with this in Circuit Python. Basically, you should always get the chip after looking at the datasheet. But then I was like, you know what? You know, before I book this order, let's look at the PCN, the product change notification from Fujitsu. And you can see this was a last time buy. You know, we bought some at the end, but we're gonna run out soon. So the chip that we're using is this one is affected. And basically, you kind of have to read what's going on. And basically, it sounds like there's a company that was doing the packaging that they would actually take the die and they would put it into an SOIC chip and then bomb the wires. And like, they're basically shutting down the SOP production. And so they're gonna change that product. You know, they're gonna change from that specific packaging manufacturer into a different one. And what's interesting is that I've seen this before in other companies and they usually don't change the part number. They just change the package and they're like, hey, you know, whatever, sorry, like it's like a little bit thinner, a little bit wider, like give the deal. But in this case, it actually did change the part number. So what was, this one is now this. Instead of JNE, it's BCE. And just for kicks, I was like, well, you know, like is that available? And it turns out that it is available to order. No, it's not immediately available. You know, it's going to basically be in stock in five months. So I'm going to probably like get samples of that Cypress chip. But what's interesting is this wasn't recommended as an alternative for the chip that went obsolete. So just like, be aware, like, sometimes what's obsolete is the packaging, not the chip itself, the silicon itself is available, but it's under a different package, but you wouldn't know that unless you read the PCN. And I know these PCNs are a little bit dry sometimes, but I really do recommend going to them because sometimes they have useful information. Like at first I was like, is this, is it only available in like USAN or TDFN? No, it's actually still SOIC. It's just from a different packaging company. So given that, I feel pretty confident that this will be a drop in replacement. What I can do is, order 500 or 1,000 pieces of this, they'll show up in March, hopefully. And then meanwhile, I can also go back to that Cypress chip that was recommended. Hold on. Which was, sorry, one second. This one. Try this because it's available in stock and I might have it as an alternative. Just make sure that the firmware works with both. Use this, it's a little bit more expensive, but it'll like get me to March and then in March I can get that new old packaging style and swap back and forth. So it's a chip shortage, we're kind of coming out of it, but there's still like a little bit of rockiness on the way out. So staying flexible with different components, swapping back and forth is going to, what basically gets you through the next six months, I think, of just dealing with minimal shortages. I mean, the lead time, five months is a lot, but look, it's not two years. I'm not seeing 99-week lead times anymore. So I'm gonna pick up some of these and try this out. So this is my great search pick. That's the great search. Okay, and then. Okay. Do you have any questions? A question that came up. Someone said, oh, maybe you let the Jiquino to suggest that as an alternative too. I will, but this is like something I bumped into today. But yes, they watched this video, so they'll know. Okay, if someone has a Trinket M-Zero connected their computer running circuit Python and mounting it in bootload mode when the computer is rebooted, any ideas on how to mitigate that? That's interesting. It shouldn't, it should boot up directly. Wonder why. That's interesting. So if it mounts in bootloader mode when the computer is rebooted, maybe check the BIOS of the computer and see if it has any, like, I do things to USB devices. I wonder if it's like trying to boot from it. You can make sure your BIOS isn't set to boot from USB. Because if so, it might have since some weird, or also check your modem manager, because the M- Modem manager? Yeah, no, it's a modem. What? I'm telling you about the modem manager. The modem manager is, it's been- This show is sponsored by US Robotics. The PC Shopper, it's the second day it's sponsored. Okay, the reason is that the SAMD21 chips, when you open up the serial port at 1200 bod, they kick out a bootloader. That's Arduino-ism. Basically, you kick it at 1200. It's like, well, why would you ever open it up at 1200 bod? You must, that must be your signal that you want me to go to the bootloader and it goes into the bootloader. The problem is that if you're running Linux or some other computer and you have a really old mouse driver or modem manager, when it starts up, it's like, oh, hey, is that a, that comp port, is that a mouse? And it opens it up at 1200 bod. That might be confusing. Your computer might be confusing the circuit Python code into booting into the bootloader. So like, actually, it's not a hardware thing. I actually think that there's something your computer is doing. The question is what? I don't know what. Yeah, because no one says in the chat I want to speak to the modem manager. It's a modem manager. You laugh, but like 80% of Linux Arduino issues are modem manager because they had it enabled until like last year, basically. And they're like, yeah, everyone's got modems. Like nobody has modems. You're connected to them with a comp port. It's probably an ESP32. Yeah, someone also suggested, could be some weird things where it cuts the power and resupplies it in such a way that an interpreter is being kind of in the reset button being hit twice, assuming you're tricky. Does that if the powers fly? Yeah. It could. I mean, you could try to get through a hub and see if that helps. It's a little bit of an unusual thing. I'm kind of guessing it's something either in the BIOS trying to boot from the drive or if it's Linux, you have something that's opening up that comp port and messing with it. Yeah. That's fun. You got the golden ticket. Ha ha ha. All right. Them's the question. Okay, cool. Oh, any word on Bino 55s? We had some. They're in stock right now. Oh yeah? Yeah. Here, click it. Zarshot. Yeah, we have them in stock. Okay. And we have the 085 we don't. Okay. However, we did ship a whole bunch to Digikey. I should check to see if they have. Someone's that's cycling the USB bus while the board is booting. We'll make it think a reset was double tapped. Yeah. All right, well, these are a lot of good suggestions, everyone. Problem solved. No, we don't have the, wow, that really helps. Any word on the ablick breakout that's on the blog well ago? I haven't not gone to it. It's like next on my list, but I'm trying to get this itsy bitsy out. Okay, cool. All right. Sorry, so the 085, we don't have the breakouts and we don't have the chips, but the 085, which honestly, I kind of like a little bit more than the 055. I like a little bit more than the 085 is in stock. So we've got those chips. And they don't come from the same company, by the way. One is Hillcrest and one is something else. I can never keep track of them. Yeah, and we'll end with a quote from the Discord, Linux comports are weird. It is true. It's true. That's a fact. Okay, that's the desk of Lady Aida. Thank you so much, everybody. We'll see you all during the week with all the shows we want. TTYL, TTY. Yeah. That's my little Linux comport joke. That's funny. Shh! Wee! Wee! Shh! Shh! Wee! Goodbye! Goodbye! TTYL, TTY.