 The great search brought to you by digikey and every single week lady the power of engineering help you Yes, you find the things you want on digikey.com later to what is the great search this week Okay, great search this week if we're gonna look for a triple inverter and it has to be really really small So let's go to the computer and I'll show off the design that I'm working on So here is a board I'm designing that'll take a Neo pixel signal WS 2811 2812 and convert it to analog LED strips and the WS 2811 if you look at the data sheets It can handle high voltages, but it doesn't do high current I only do like 20 milliamps per string But I want to do much more than 20 milliamps because there's many in parallel And so I need a transistor output. I need like strong driving transistors The problem is if you look at this, this is a common anode output Which means the LED is on when the signal is low But if I have n-channel FETs like I do here a low signal would be off not on So I actually have to like invert the signal before I feed it into these power transistors So first off because it's common anode. I think it's open drain Actually, I don't know but I guess you need to open drain a couple little pull-ups here Just 4.7 K and then I need an inverter and this inverter I want it to It can't be open drain. It has to be push-pull so you should be trigger output Easy three channels go red green blue It should be able to run off of five volts because that's the signal level and It should be small Because it needs to fit on this board and it has to be like really tiny But I don't like BGA so like small, but maybe not too small like just right medium. So let's go to Did you key and see what we can find? So first of all look for is we just type in inverter. I Mean here's like I can actually use transistors to do the inversion But again, I want it to be very small and I want to be push-pull. So let's look so gates and inverters 13,000 Options well, we'll pair it down Don't forget. There's dark mode, but I'm not gonna have it on Okay, so let's also only look for active Let's just start with active and normally stocking Okay, and then I want it to be an Inverter gate also knows a not gate. I don't want any other gates because I don't want multiple inputs I want anyone in and one out and it just is you know the opposite Okay, so let's Select that. Okay. Now we're down to 1500 Number of circuits three if that's option sometimes, you know, you can't get the number you want So you're like you want four four doesn't exist and you get six, you know, it's like one two three Like the ones are very cute that will stop twenty threes or whatever You get three and Then goes up to six and nine. Okay, cool. No problem apply Okay, now we're really down to only a hundred four options, which is nice. We're comparing this down Next we talked about open drain versus Schmidt trigger So the reason I want it not to be open drain is because I want this to be able to Pull the gate of these transistors high has to pull them high and I want to do it nice and strong nice and fast Why have pull-up resistors if I don't need them Sometimes you want open drain not this time. We're gonna go with Schmidt trigger Output and then voltage supply remember I said this has to be powered from five volts because The input is coming from the WS 2011 and my only power supply is five volts so we're not select these three point sixes and Yeah, this one's fine too four point five, but you know the voltage might be a little lower Okay Good and now We want it to be small But not too small So let's see what's available because now I've actually like kind of pared it down to about like a hundred options Okay, so I don't want BGA. Definitely. So let's like let's just select everything but that because I'm not doing bgs Okay, I only got rid of two Okay, so good. There's actually quite a lot of options another thing is okay. I'll be honest there's like 74 logic and there is TC seven logic, I don't really know the TC seven logic. I do know one thing about so T a T logic is Transistor level output so it can drive it can shift down, but actually don't really need that I'll think I'll just go with whatever is available that is kind of like the low-cost and and around So let's look at by price Let's see what's around To be honest like almost all these are good. Oh, there's some marketplace options, which are okay, but let's go with Just to make it easy so I could only buy whatever because marketplace is just a duplicate of whatever we already have in stocky digickey Let's exclude that. Okay So there's these exons and there are some M sops These are good. I'm a little I'm a little biased against the TC seven series just because I'm not familiar with it So I'm gonna select only the 74 series because I know I know 74 although I'll be honest I'm sure that TC sevens are equivalent Okay, now we're talking. Okay. We got a lot of exons V sops 74 hcs Let's look at what's most in stock that's another good way of telling like what's the most popular this one looks not too bad basically anything that is 74 LVC Inverter This I don't know why you know what I'm gonna select Logic type sorry features and when I not sub the X I'm gonna have just Schmidt trigger because I don't know why Had I think open drain ones. Okay, you're talking hc series LVC series the difference between the two is basically like voltage quiescent current and Logic level high and then is there a voltage supply both of you know, basically the same Current output high, you know, I actually want the higher current one I'm gonna go with the LVC because I want to be able to like really Turn these on very quickly. I don't think it's gonna make a big difference, but if they're all about the same Something that can slew a lot of current for me. Good to turn on these transistors. So I'm gonna go with this one the SN 74 LVC three three gate 14 inverter and there's lots in stock and They're like 30 cents apiece. So this is my pick That's a good search