 Life from New York it's Ask an engineer buddy and welcome to ask engineer. It's me lady Ada the engineer with me mr. Lady Ada on camera control I've got this live show ask engineer, which we broadcast every Wednesday at 8 p.m. From downtown Manhattan. We cover all the latest in electronics maker news hacker news Kidding shows videos 3d printing and more We have a lot up front with us. I can see the whole show. So mr. Lady Ada. Why don't you tell us? That's my chill. Oh tonight is weekend Yeah, we can we can is the code 10% off and need to restore all the way up to 1159 p.m. Or when I remember to turn it off, you'll know why Can is in the code a little bit Look about our eight different live series of shows. She's got finished with the show and tell big about desk of lady Ada and some of the great search John Parks Product pick of the week time travel look around the world makers hackers are as engineers We have a special mail bag involving a fruit I know and whipper snapper one of our new free offerings cool A little reminder of what we're doing for our jobs board and more some fun stuff in the world of retro tech It's March and Tosh happy March and Tosh everyone We got some Adafruit factory footage Which are now kind of turning into music videos that have factory footage because that's that's our jam right now I like doing that some 3d printing videos and speed-ups and more We got ion MPI R2 by did you key and a different we got some top-secret some really cool stuff. We got new products answer your questions all that and more on ask an engineer, but don't forget Do the question on discord? IT slash discord or discord dot gt slash a different because it's hard to keep track of all the questions all different social media properties So we do it on discord That's our show tonight. Okay. Let's pay some bills. So cuz we can we have free stuff Beep beep Don't miss out free stuff. Okay. Let me tell you. Yeah, what do you got? I'm 99 dollars or more. We've got the half-size from a proto breadboard a great for making your projects permanent Take some of those breadboard projects and they fit one-to-one on this PCB 149 or more. We're still giving away pink circuit boards a PCB KB 2040 features the RP 2040 chip with a 8 megabytes of flash to make you teep for it usb-c button cast slated pads and it fits wherever a pro micro would have fit but faster and 190 animal more you get free UPS grand shipping with the Comptown to the United States and Back by popper demand and also we could get chips. So you're playing on express That's how you know the chip's shortage has eased quite a bit We got samd 21 chips that feature in this circuit playground express our Favorite all-in-one development board with LEDs buttons sensors Capacitive touch and more it's back in stock and free when you order to do that or more. All right We do a bunch of live shows Every single week hours and hours of programming Programming about programming sometimes we just got off the show and tell so show and tell this week had a lot of Cool interesting projects. This had a bunch of aid for folks and a bunch of folks from the community It's hard to pick one project, but you know for the sake of doing a highlight of things I'm gonna say the Solenoid project that Steve brought by because it was the first time he came on the show and he's like I'm nervous I mean he showed a great demo at this cool solenoid board that just went pink pink pink pink pink pink pink pink and like right away I'm like, oh you could shoot ping-pong with that. You can have it like I don't know It's so intuitive. It's like, you know, you just press the buttons and so yeah So very cool projects and congrats Steve is for making a very clever interesting thing I like type projects that people will make things that you didn't expect them to make Things with so anything that can go ding like but you can line up a bunch of bells I mean, that's kind of fun actually Why do you know there's that remember the robot that would the drumming robot that it would drive up to things and it would just like start drumming That's why that's hilarious. Yeah, okay ABR board Brayden Lane. Yeah This is a thing you could and Psy had that cool pie. We'll have one more really good and then Just cool judge Like JP had the note inside the synthesizer. We have a bounty to help Scott We got a lot of stuff to get stuff there. All right, so Desk of Lady Aida we do that every single week it goes in two parts. What did you show off? Okay one this week Okay, so part one we talked about March and Tosh. I think I showed off the Prince floppy as well Showed that a little bit. Yeah, I showed that off. I should hit the demo I also talked about the DVI feather and I was testing it so connecting, you know running our Pico DVI script and it just like worked Sending output to you, you know, you screen captured some DVI output and also connected up to one of our HDI monitors We have a lot of projects that we're gonna do now that we have a DVI output board. I think it'll be fun. Yeah, we're gonna show we're gonna show that soon too. Okay And then you show some hypercard stuff because you love hypercard Yeah, and also we got the RFM feather and that was what led into a great search search search for things every single week using your powers of engineering So this RFM feather we have a UFL connector on there Which means you can connect it to big antennas that use SMA and so we talked about SMA versus RP SMA And I showed off two antennas watch out already one person has said that it They didn't realize that in fact they were not connecting through and it's a common issue that people have if you're not paying attention that there's two versions of SMA and And then I showed how you can get an adapter cable from the key They stock them in all lengths and sizes to take your kind of standard PCB mount UFL connector and bring it to an SMA antenna Okay, then we have JP's workshop which Every Thursday and during the week before that on Tuesdays We have product pick of the week take it away JP for this week's highlight Ding ding ding ding ding ding The Grand Central Metro M4 Express Cortex M4 Chip fantastic for running circuit Python as well as Arduino the number of analog pins on it is one of the huge Draws for me. It has 16 easily available analog pins. Here's my Grand Central and I have a Proto board on top of it to which I've soldered 16 little Potentiometers and wired those up to the 16 Analog inputs on the Grand Central and now you'll see if you look at this top these top two rows of eight knobs as I turn the Potentiometers in my Grand Central I'm changing the position of those knobs in the software and they're thereby I'm Adjusting parameters on this video since it is the Grand Central Metro M4 Express Okay, then on Fridays we have deep dive with Tim check it out every eight Friday 2 p.m Pacific 5 p.m Eastern you can take a deep dive into the innards of circuit Python and probably watch how to build a complete thing or dive Deep into a library and more on Fridays time travel I'm gonna just lead right into some reminders and news and stuff like that. So first up we're Always trying new platforms and we're also trying to go to the places that are the most open and don't necessarily Monetize you constantly or do you say like there's so like social media is Anyways, you know the phrase your other product anyways So we've been looking forward to an alternative to Twitter so I'm not done find us there We post specific things on mastodon Lady, and I manage the account there. We don't have an automatic bot thing It's content that we're like this guy's desk And we also dust it off our tumblr account and you can catch us on tumblr Some of you are probably watching this on tumblr live We had a tumblr account like 13 years ago, and then I go tumblr got acquired by yahoo and Ryzen and then it got acquired by Automatic runs WordPress and the folks there are doing a pretty good job I think of making great communities for people to share their passions as they say Really big retro community our communities. So that's where we are So we're putting some special stuff there including our March and Tosh Offerings, so if you like retro stuff, it is there. So long live the fediverse Next up mailbag Okay, this week's mailbag is a little special it's a part of IO once again people are Discovering that we have this service and they're really liking it So whipper snapper, which is a no-code or low-code way to connect your devices online has Bunch of fans So this one is from a parent and a teacher and they say just wanted to add that I use a CO2 sensor with my eighth grade science class today and they were able to see firsthand the rapid rise of CO2 levels with the candle burning under a jar and they use the SCD 41 next to it as well as evidence of their own CO2 exhale This is a nifty package and works well with the ESP 32 whipper snapper. Thanks for the helpful support So that's a really useful science class. Yeah, and you know, we're like three years after You know the beginning of Covid there was an anniversary but during that time I was like, oh wow Maybe schools could all show how do you how to build CO2 sensors? Like we could all build CO2 sensor because it just showed how many people were in an area and stuff like that At least there'd be something useful to build and maybe learn from that didn't happen. But Hey, this is yeah, so maybe maybe they didn't have whipper snapper that maybe that's the reason but You can use a different IO free. We have plus accounts and you also have whipper snapper And you can connect up any sensor that we have that supported and it was as in almost instantly do stuff like this Yeah, you got kids and you want to show CO2 levels Simple project. In fact, we get Many nice emails like this, but once in a while we get emails, let's say you make it too easy. It should be hard They should cut their teeth on the hard stuff. Anyways not wanted so I'm gonna go over to Jobs at Adafruit.com or you go to Adafruit.com slash jobs or Adafruit.com slash careers and you'll see we made a change We had a jobs board where anyone could just post they were moderated and we would Then release them to make sure, you know, they weren't sketchy or scamming because there's a lot of sketchy scamming things out there Be careful everybody But for now, so we decided let's get rid of that wordpress jobs board Let's put it on Adafruit.com slash jobs and then we're gonna migrate things to use our user pages on learn So right now, this is the brackish period. You know, there's salt water fresh water This is the middle. So right now the only thing we have up is some offerings from Adafruit So if you're in the New York area and you want to work with our team check the jobs board there We have a couple things right now and more all the time But that is what we're doing with jobs right now This will change very soon But I wanted to have this for our team when we get an email that says I want to post a job They can send a link to this video timecode thing on YouTube and you'll see this is what we're doing But don't worry. You'll be able to post jobs soon again. We're just shutting down a server and getting ready for other things Okey-dokey, it's retro time Okay, retro check this week I'm gonna highlight some more things from our celebrations of all things retro Mac ish I'm dancing on the line of maybe It's not So we have things like the Apple Newton. I'll talk about that in a second. We have other things Even like the next computers. It's kind of close. But anyways, we do have some fun things. These are the Apple design speakers I think if it wasn't doing like the Mac a heyday, right of like 1985 to like 95 that that's fine. So these are all in the Adafruit collection We also have the black speakers. Now. These were a special somewhat more limited rare edition these Paired well with the Apple CD which we also covered and then here is a clear Newton This was super rare and this was given away at a developer event By Apple when they wanted people to make Applications and more for the Newton clear aesthetic is super cool from the Adafruit collection then we have our box copy of hypercard that was Still sealed. We haven't cracked out the um floppies, but um, this was kind of what started a lot of us on Programming you used to use hypercard. What did you make with hypercard? We're talking about some games and I made like Interactive like weird art stuff. Yeah, do you think this helped you on your path to where you are now totally? Yeah, it was one of my first programming languages. It was probably my first, um, my true dick declarative language Previous ones were like scripting, but like this one, you know, you had variables and you set them like I tried to learn Um pascal But pascal, you know, because that was what people programmed apple computers in but it was it was too difficult for me I couldn't um, I didn't know what an integer was and I got really stuck Because I didn't know what an integer was I kept using the word integer and I'm like, I don't know what that is I think the closest thing now is like yeah, there's like make coding and everything but as far as like Programming a lot of people are getting started with python and like block coding languages. I'm a little worried I think the python doesn't have integers. See what I'm being able to do. I'm a little worried that there isn't something like hypercard There's a glitch for young and zoe, you know what I mean? Like hyper it was a different time and place And there wasn't internet that it wasn't there and it was just before the idea of stacks and stuff like that. Yeah So anyways, um, I have a little two minute video that has um, it's from computer chronicles And it has one it has the creator of hypercard and it's a long video. Um online. It's like 26 minutes long Um, but this is just a two minute clip just to show you like how interesting and powerful this is and there's still nothing Quite like it. So take it away Uh, like 1980 something Hypercard, what is it? It's not hyper. It's not even a card. It's not quite system software. It's not quite application software Could you tell us what type cards all about though? Well really simply put hypercard is a software erector set It lets uh non programmers put together interactive information Show us how you actually do this bill Um, you use cards That contain graphics and text and buttons Here i've got a stack of cards and I can press on this button And it will take me to another card. Okay, that button's particular function is get to the next card Right, we can have lots of buttons to do different things buttons can do things like dialing the phone and taking you to cards and Um, lots of different whatever you tell it to do. Yeah, okay Um, the cards are grouped together into stacks that you put on a floppy disk and can share with somebody else Um, and you can organize it so that the any card can jump to any other card Is this where you get that notion of hypertext and built into the hypercard system? Yeah, it's it's kind of the the freedom to Organize the information according to how things are associated with each other not just according to the next card in the list Right right, okay Um, the buttons as I said can do lots of things. Here's one that makes a noise and sounds um And you can have lots of different kinds of cards The the standard three by five card is a little weak metaphor, but you can include things like an expense report Or maybe a appointment book things like that lots of different kinds of things can be on cards Even little interactions. Here's a here's a little keyboard that you could click on And it makes uh Sounds and moves the note so you can do things within a card itself a card is just not some information What's real important is that cards contain both information and interaction All right, um, so, you know watch our posts posts on Everywhere with the tag march and tosh especially on tumblr especially on tumblr because that seems to be Um where the most people are sharing these type of Projects also messed on but either way we linked all the places um on desk of lady aida you showed the prince floppy project which is uh I do want to show this live though because it that could look like a label. This is actually an lcd screen so why don't you um unplug it and plug it in so this is a Representation of what we have on archive.org. I'm gonna back up back up more. Sorry. Yeah, I got Yeah, so it's a floppy. It's a 3d print floppy. This is the pipe portal project And then when you plug it in it displays You saw circuit python fly by real quick it displays the um the logo that prints it out on all these floppy disks a while ago, so I thought I would do is show you the um archive.org page so um You can also go to our website the prince symbol has been salvage from a 1993 floppy This is neil neils big prince fan had this we were able to copy it We were worried that this would destroy the disk. There's not that many left And when prince changed his name till ours formerly known as prince had to send out the font To all the journalists to say if you're gonna write about me. That's my name So um, we uh were able to duplicate it Get it to archive.org. I think you've got to go to archive.org ford slash Details for slash prince underscore floppy. This is what the original floppy looks like and so what we're doing is preserving exactly what's on there and putting it on this Essentially, it's a usb drive with us screen Um, and we're going to give this to neil who uh was kind enough to to let us mess with this to uh get the Yeah, we well you needed, you know, we had a power book 150 which had an internal floppy drive That still worked. Um, which was like really I think we tested with A random different floppy to make sure that the floppy disk wouldn't damage the disk So like you could read right from it and then we um, we carefully yeah worth noting this this is a yellow disk I'm sure they didn't have purple floppies at the time but ours that we have Is uh purple and we're gonna send this over to and sparkly and sparkles So we thought that was we thought that was kind of cool. Um, but if you think about it You could do this for anyone who wanted to make this as an an idea for gifts So let's imagine there is something special that someone Um remembers a game that they played Um, and it was on you know, you install on a floppy you can put it on there give it to them and You put the emulator on there. There's lots of things you can do Anywho, um, that's our retro stuff It's by Thumbnail Harbor time lady Let's do it Okay, um lots going on. Um in the last few weeks when we've been doing the Python on hardware segment We would focus in on one big story, but I wanted to Show the cornucopia of stories and more than Anne and team put together resilient. Um, so we covered pie day We also uh had a note about um the raspberry pie foundation, which is different than the raspberry pie company Foundation sports kids get stuff out to everyone if you're thinking about donating To a cause that gets computer science Into the brains of young ins this might be to think about. Um, we also try to put things in like reminders We did a roll out a long time ago with our team but now the rest of the world is is is Doing we're all doing the same thing. So github is going to start rolling out two factor authentication So if you're using github, you will need to use it in some way. Yeah, um, that's good. Um More little ways for security the better. Um make interviewed geek mom projects You use a lot of our stuff. Um using circuit python and neuroscience And so if you just go through and see all the different projects that many projects it's a sun dialer This is a really neat aquarium that you can use a native fruit bag tag at circuit python. Um therman Uh, but there is, uh Well, there's two things one is the Yeah, this is a new rp Lego minifig And it runs circuit And there's just like a ton of stuff But there is one that I thought that was neat because we we had to release this a while ago and this was a really good video um This is if you want to use your computer as like a hardware interface, right? Yeah, is it the best Yeah, basically it's like if you have any computer even like, you know, that one's linux or actually it works on mac and windows And you want to control gpi your like buttons and switches or drive neopixels or connect to spi displays You can use one of these um ft 232 h break outboards that we have and um You connect it to your computer with usb and then in c python like on your desktop You can use our library that talks through the ft 232 h to your hardware and like can I mean it's It's not as fast ironically as a microcontroller because that's that everything has to go over usb And so there's a little bit of delay Um before like buttons, you know, you want to add like arcade buttons or leds or neopixels Or sensor data that you want to get um, it can be easier than Having to program a microcontroller that you then send data, right? You write the code ones instantly and gets data back and forth So it's I try to tell people how amazingly cool and useful this is and I don't know It's hard to comprehend. Yeah, it's like sometimes you don't need to use a microcontroller You use a computer for stuff because then you get all the benefits of a computer Without like I have to optimize everything for a microcontroller But the other thing that's kind of neat is if you learn python once Works lots of places the same circuit python library will be a require which is a big goal of circuit python We kind of like that. All right. So that's this week's python on hardware Um, don't forget you get this you can get this delivered every week kind of like a dj dibbons mailbox Maybe it'll go you've got mail You've got a you've got a box full of wires It for daily is where you sign up separate site. We don't spam you we don't harvest email We kept it completely separate from all the food store stuff Because we don't want your data. We don't want it. We don't want to we don't want to mess with you We don't we don't like pop-ups. We don't like spam. We don't like that either. So you got to you got to be the change um We're gonna put this hardware company I don't know if you knew that I do Every day, you know that So we have a bunch of guides on the big board this week Um, a lot of good guides. Um, and we'll show some off. I think it's trondesk, right? I think the trondesk was from last week, but why not? Talk about it. Yeah, um, it's a cool 3d printed disc painters on the show until yeah, well, yeah, you showed it off Yeah, we did talk about it. It's magnetic. So it it clips onto your back Which I think is this is what makes it really cool because um, you know, you can you store it on your back Like with magnets and it looks just like the uh, the movie um, we've got a guide for the uh Pie cowbell. I think this was last week as well. But why not again? Um, we're doing a lot more cowbells You're gonna see a prototype today. Just we showed the video last week. Yep. This is this row was last week, bro Yeah, that was the well, I think that guy actually went live last Friday. So we got a lot going on cyber cat midi Um, this is an infinite text adventure. This is the preview. We showed we showed the preview and and uh, Jeppler finished it. Um, so this uses um, the open ai chat gpt Um api to connect through with the circuit python boards It's actually a good demo of like how to take the chat gpt through circuit python And using the touch screen it basically the prompt is you know, um, make up a text adventure game And then give me four options to uh, what access to do and it'll actually like play like it'll come up with a game For you that plays Kind of forever. Uh, you can't win eventually, but you know goes in weird directions Yeah, the neat thing that we'll probably see soon is someone will make a magic eight ball that when you shake it It'll ask a question and you get the answer But it'll be maybe audio or something like that because there's this is it's just spews text We were talking about this I think on the show until like yeah chat gpt right now Is not something you should trust like your web search with maybe yet But it will write you amazing fan fan fiction. Yeah, if you if you want to see if jacote And tuvok eventually hook up in that story. Well, like this would write it for you Okay, that's really specific I mean, I don't know. I don't know if it would write that story. Okay, anyhow So if this you know, even if you don't build up a particular project It's interesting if you're like, hey, I want to try chat gpt through a microcontroller not a computer. So it uses um the uh, you know, you can use a pico w or a uh ESP 32 with circuit python and with the request library and the code jebler shows you how to get the open ai token So you can make chat gpt projects. I just think it's cool and weird. We were talking about how Well, I was talking about how We're finally here with microcontrollers that can do scripting languages And we just have a gigantic pile of undending text that can be parsed and found like you like Okay, so for the for the folks who've been playing along so back in the day We would do projects and we would want to find an open An open api or something to just give us some data So like weather all of a sudden all the weather places stopped allowing access Then we're like, let's try something else. So unfortunately like there was bitcoin price And that like if you look on like hackaday or any website, it's like, oh look, there's like, you know What the price of bitcoin? It's it's easy. They made it so easy. Yes. He's they get made it so easy but then yeah, don't require a solo and so Adafruit was like specifically targeted. Like, why are you showing the bitcoin price? You're you're the worst I'm the I'm the problem. We're the problem. That's why bitcoin is why it is because it's a project So we would you know, people were making these like little So here's the price of of of uh, whatever crypto So we stopped doing those projects. We took we took them down because we're just tired of like people threatening our team Um, like, oh, you know, I hate you. I'm gonna Beat you up or something because you're like cryptos. So now I think There'll be a new thing to hate but um, this is kind of a very neat unending thing. I actually saw someone that said, um It asked for like some type of like classify thing and then it said give that to me and jason And it did it. Yeah Oh It's real. All right. Next up we have the star fragment iot lamp. Uh, this was a project I know Pedro and lis worked on um, it's it's models off the star fragments in Zelda breath of the wild that they would only light up at night So you had until sunrise to go find them. Um, so this lamp Uses an esp 32 as to qt pie and it also an iot project It's circuit python when it wakes up it figures out Based on you tell it what time zone you're in and it uh, or your location or location it goes online and it um Find out when the sun set the sunrise is and it turns on It starts brightening as the sun is setting and starts dimming as the um, I got one of those lamps But it doesn't it wasn't connected to the internet and I have to remember and it's not a reason Yeah, no music because it doesn't automatically do it all for you. Um, so this one does it automatically Uh, trevor, uh, who is our ios developer has been learning python and building a bunch of projects for fun Including this mini weather station using um open weather map. This is based off of I think the We had um, you know the pie portal version of this, but he shook it down and made it nice and cute So he could sit on his desk. Um, it's just cold new york and then um, erin we also The video we're gonna show um, we were inspired when we went to chinese new year here in new york city Um, we saw these really cool dragon dances and we're like, how cool would it be if there was these puppets that people were playing with They had electronic so it has a circuit playground as like the the pearl right the fireball in the mouth But then when you shake it, um in make code you can detect like on shake the whole body Lights up with uh leds. So it's a very I think the electronics hobby gives you something which is a new lens to look upon the world with Which is you see something like a beautiful Uh traditional historic thing like you know these dancing dragons and then you're like, oh, I know electronics If they really need to have sound activation and lights and all sorts of things and you get to combine the two Yeah, I don't know if it's possible to come up with anything truly original anymore Like every bubble that every well every bubblegum flavor is done But you can combine different things and I think that's what An electronics hobby allows you to do so that was an e1. Okay. Um, let's uh play the video from erin Roll right into manufacturing Um factory footage too and then we'll see you on the other side Um, we're gonna do a couple of videos. We have um the star project and then we're gonna do a speed up mushrooms. Okay. Yeah See you soon. Let's keep rolling You can build a light up project inspired by the star fragments from video games such as animal crossing and the legend of zelda This geometric star is fully 3d printed and illuminated with neopixel leds It's powered by a wi-fi dev board to know what time it is So it'll light up when the sun is setting and turns off when the sun rises Just like the illuminous collectibles in the game powered by the 80 fruit cutie pi esp 32 s2 This dev board features the expressive esp 32 s2 wi-fi chipset It's got 13 gpio 4 megabytes of flash an on-board neopixel Stem a qt and native usb for running circuit python or arduino The neopixel driver bff allows you to quickly add neopixel leds to your projects It has a 5 volt level shifter and detachable jst ph connector It's designed to fit on the back of any cutie pi or xiao board The code was written in circuit python by lives clark and uses the open media api to get the sunrise and sunset The code uses the api to request when and where the sun is and then calculates the time remaining until either the sunset or sunrise In the loop time is tracked and pings every five minutes The neopixels gradually brighten or dim depending on whether the sun is setting or rising The core of the star fragment is a dodecahedron that has 12 hollow spikes that snap fit together and they're 3d printed without any support material A 3d printed mount houses two neopixel sticks and snap fits into the bottom of the dodecahedron The bottom spike features a hole for passing a cable and snap fits into the star fragment core All of the pieces are hollow and allow the neopixel leds to fully illuminate the geometric shape We also designed a base and stand for the star fragment to rest on so it can prop up nicely on your nightstand In anticipation for the next zelda game We thought it'd be fun to take this out in the wilderness and remnants about finding a star fragment just like in the game We hope this inspires you to check out circuit python and the cutie pi esp 32 s2 for your next bright idea This week's iron mpi is from cui devices That's right. They've not got a nice new logo every single week We explore all the new products as purchased by diggi And if we call this mpi a new product introduction, what is this week's mpi? Okay, this week's ad mpi is from cui devices It's their series of den rail Tronal blocks that are stackable and they come in a variety of sizes and you might be like din blocks you mean like din jar the hero of the Mandalorian who also shoots din rails out of his blaster Yeah, yeah, disney does everything now Oh, look if i have five minutes i'd like to do a silly little photo shop But so you've got din rails which um or look like that minus the blaster part And these are a standardized Metal railing that is used in servers electrical work robotics Automation and other electronics a lot of an electrical distribution box also use these and By having a standard mounting rail. This is the wikipedia article But having a standard mounting rail Basically you avoid the problem of what I used to do which was just drill some holes in the wall and maybe use some like Lag bolts or maybe have a 2x4 and like things wouldn't be rated for holding stuff and it would get loose So you attach the din rail very solidly to your enclosure or to your wall and then you can easily Slide items on and off the railing. It's like design. It's designed very nicely And it's a standardized size and everyone agrees to use this size And so you can kind of like mix and match from different suppliers so You know, for example, this is the they have a bunch of different ones But the one we're going to talk about the most is the tbdr-13-25-bk um and family and This is a bi levels a two layer terminal block and you can see You actually kind of like see into it. It's it's uh to keep it slim Maybe we'll go to the overhead real fast and I can I can show this Um, I'll show so this is actually I'll maybe I'll just go to the demo now. So this is a din rail Focus it's nice and clear as is the din rail. So I just got like a nice aluminum one, but they're made also out of steel and um, you can see that there's got like it's got the c shape that um, things can slide On So, you know, you there are ones sometimes you can like bolt onto and make it stronger mechanically But for the most part you could just slide things on and off so you can position them and they like pretty much stay in place And this is two terminal blocks. So I slid them side by side and then you can slide more just by Hold on. This is the the connector part here And you hook this on The only problem is once you do this, it's kind of hard to you can take it off. We have to slide it off so it snaps in and then Um, you push it onto the end and now you've got three terminal blocks of three distribution blocks And these come in different sizes and this is like the smaller version Sorry, this is the smaller version and this version In comparison with this one. So let me slide this back out So I can show you the difference and we'll talk about them This one is a distribution. So you see these four connected These two are connected together in these two or one piece of metal and then there's this big punk of Tint copper that connects between the two. So these are connected together This one is a grounding style. So you see that these two pieces connect together. So there's like two You know push to um insert wires But then the metal comes down and it scrapes up against the railing. So this is a grounding connection So if you want to have an earth ground, um, this is one way to do it Then you just earth ground the railing. So it's kind of a little bit of a hack Use the railing not just as mechanical, but as an electrical Earth grounding. Okay, so let's go back to Yeah, so that's din rails. Um, so there's a lot of different families if you want to buy din rail FYI Did you key stocks like the zillions of different sizes? Yeah, they have a lot This is they're all pre-cut if you need to you don't have to cut it yourself. You don't want to get um a hacksaw There's channel. It's they're made, you know by every maker to copper pvc stainless steel steel Illuminate whatever you want galvanized non galvanized There's different types. There's a couple different types with slots without Lots of like again, this is very standard. So they have like a thousand different products And there's also lots of accessories Um, so we're talking about terminal blocks here and you can see that they have You know thousands of terminal blocks and channel, but there's also like accessories and holders Um, oh, and then uh, I think that's cool So on any chance that you came out your din rail to your IKEA pegboard with automotive pusher bits Yeah, sometimes we don't see more just like i'm going to decorate my helmet Oh, actually, I forgot I was going to open this package. So can you go to the overhead again? Oh, are we doing an unboxing? Well, I was going to show off You know everyone on youtube was doing unboxings for a while. Maybe we should get into that So this is um, I just you know, we have them in the store So this is like a din rail mount for an arduino uno You would plug in your metro or your arduino and then you know, it would it has that same done. Did it? Yeah, I don't I don't want to get out of the packaging because it's i'm not going to actually use it But it has that same plastic That plastic, you know hook piece That uh slides on to the railing. So this would slide in and then you could have terminal blocks Being doing now. Um, so din rail is very very popular. I really like it I have used it in some projects for like robotics right to mount um Like terminal blocks and driver boards and then you know onto a body of something and it's you know, you don't want to I have everything kind of strewn around. Um, so Uh, sorry, uh, so the accessories. So, you know, the uh, cui devices product pages They also have these little plastic pieces Um, so if you get the right ones that match like because there's different sizes And we'll show you some of the different sizes There's plastic pieces that match up and will like protect that last piece because you saw like one side is open And the other side is closed. So on the end you're going to want Something to kind of cap it so they have caps that will fit. Um, I did get a cap But unfortunately, um, I wasn't paying attention Didn't realize that they were all different sizes and I got the wrong size but You'll not be me. You'll get the right size. Um, so this is one, uh, you know, this is again the the double layer so two heights A grounding version because you can see it has that metal piece that bends down and connects to the railing And this one is uh, kind of large. It's 68 by 46 millimeters five millimeters thick And then they have a kind of short short like a short squat version. It's like one layer Also a grounding type And this one is uh, 68 69 millimeters by 35 Some of these go down to 14 gauge some do 12 gauge all start at 26 So they're, you know, if you're using kind of a standard 22 gauge 24 gauge wires should be good and they're all Rated. Um, so the one I got here. I'll even read on the side. It's c e and ul 500 volts 22 amps. So these are great for power distribution But they'll also be fine for uh data and this is like the shortest one. This is the smallest size I showed you It's only got two terminals. Um, but also a grounding uh connection type And this one is a petite 48 by 30 millimeter So, you know, you can mix and match stack, you know, any combo and then see why also has a awesome um Guide with really beautiful images. They have a wonderful. Where does their web graphics and web design is Top notch, um a terminal guide block to terminal block selection They have a huge family of terminal blocks. I think this is the first time they've gone into din rail compatible blocks But these are extremely cute Slim they snap on very nicely and they look very nicely made. They look very solid and reliable and a wide range of sizes And wire gauges available on digikey and stock 647 There's 18 different terminal blocks different colors and sizes and configs Um, and then they also have uh six or eight of the caps. So still not used to everything starting to be that stock again This is great. All right. Good stuff. Another good on api. Thank you. Later. That's of course Okay dookie we're gonna roll right into new products before you don't forget the code is we can And I hit it All right, well, don't forget we have a little recap on um, well Probably you're watching on youtube, but uh, we do a little recap each week So this was last week's and if you missed last week's Products you can always catch up because we have a lot going on. Um Let's just you know videos that we put together but this week we have some new stuff Okay, we've got some edge lighting LED strip. This is just a warm white and cool white leds. Um, this is the warm white that we're showing here This one looks so warm. Um, it's just plain 12 volts, you know plug it in and it's like ultra high density leds And it looks like just one large You know warm a strip of light We've had these before that they like the light comes out the front these come the light comes out the side So you can see only the top edge is lit So this would be good for edging something like if you want to have a thin Layer of light go around something architectural or a project where you have to go around the corners Um, this way the light will go. That's warm. What if I wanted cool? We have cool too. So cool light Again, we have the version where the light comes out the front And that's good for like But the edge leading edge lighting is also very very useful So actually again, you want to bend it around because flexible you want to bend it around cool I want my cool side cold and my warm side warm got both warm and cool and the next week we'll have uh rgb Um as well, but just as a note, um, it's all one led like one big light you as you power it the whole thing lights up It's not indressable. You can't animate the individual pixel all the nothing one ginormous led that you drive 12 volts. Okay, uh next up Yet another raspberry pi camera this week. It's the global shutter camera. So this is kind of interesting Yes, this is used in photography instead of scanning through the pixels to take a photo like most um high Resolution cameras do this is a global shutter, which means that it it grabs all the pixels at once So that means that um, you know, some people know if you try to take photos or something that's going very fast You're trying to speed photography sports photography Some wildlife or nature or whatever something's moving very fast You'll get like a skewing effect. Like if you take a photo of a propeller, you know It's a common thing that you'll see that as the scan lines get scanned like the image Looks stuttery with the global shutter The photo is taken all at once. So you don't have that stuttering effect. There's no, um change between, you know There's no motion between the lines, but it's a lower resolution. I think it's only like, you know One point more like two megapixels. It's not like, you know, five or 10 or 12 mega pixels That's the trade-off But if you want global shutter, you want to take the photo all at once Uh, this camera's for you however want to note It doesn't come with lenses. You'll have to pick up these things. They don't come with it You're gonna need it. Yeah, see how it doesn't come with a lens You're gonna need a lens And if we say you need a lens and we have a picture of a lens, don't say, well, there's a picture of a lens I should have got a lens. No, you need a lens. These are what lenses look like. That's right So you'll need the lens. It's a c or cs lens can be strong to this. Yeah You screw on don't come with it and yet the wide angle or the telephoto And that's how you take photos of the thing either far away or really close. Yeah All right next up. This is coming soon, but we are excited. It's gonna seem but a lot of people asked us They wanted to know When these would be available. So we figured we'd put them in the shop This is the dvi output rp 20. They're gonna go fast They're gonna go fast and they're very cool. So it has a dvi output port Also known as hdmi compatible. It doesn't have audio although we're kind of looking into maybe we could at audio But for right now, it's dvi only and we've got an adrino library that we recommend people use where you have a frame buffer And this is the adrino for gfx like demo So that's cool. You know it draws like circles and lines and squares and fonts and text So it's a 320 by 240 internal or 400 by 240 internal frame buffer 16 bit color um, let me see some color here and that's uh That's because that's how much memory the rp 2040 has right the rp 2040 only has 264 k of ram. So if you are using 320 by 240, that's 155 k 400 by 240, that's 190 ishk So, you know, you want to have someone relift over and those are kind of standard um dvi resolutions You know could there's some pico dvi projects where they like automatically on the fly generate graphics And so you can go to higher resolution But then you don't have a frame buffer you're kind of like on the fly trying to generate the the graphics But you know what, you know, you check it out. Um, I'm sure you know, you'll the folks here who are excited about doing dvi hacking Um, what's just really neat is it's all in one. You get the all the feather pins Um labeled, you know at the top and it's like the standard feather GPIO as well. I scored c eight megabytes of flash usb c The dvi, you know output at the hdmi port using eight consecutive pins You also get the hot plug detect utility and c ec pins if you'd like and the i-squared c Coming from the dvi, right? That's the edid reading code so you can tell what monitors connected to That's level shifted and you get that on the i-squared c pins as well So, um good video hacking board that will be coming soon. Figure to let people sign up for it Sign up, look at fast Week or two will have them in the shop. We can go to the next one Okay, so, uh, we're getting close to the start of the show but to get ready. We're gonna have a can pal This is the board that I designed when a few years ago when we were doing some can experimentation and then I couldn't get anything But the components are finally available and back in stock. I can't believe we couldn't even get like can bus transceivers That's how bad it was the last few years, but now they're plentiful. So this is a can bus transceiver This is used with a microcontroller that has a can peripheral The can peripheral is the thing that generates the bits and the transceiver is what converts it from those bits into The differential signal required to be on a can bus If your microcontroller doesn't have a can peripheral You can't use this this is only for those again those microcontrollers that have if it says some of the data sheet I have can bus you can use this and you connect the rx and tx pins to the two can pins power it with three or uh three to five volts And it uses whatever logic level you power it with Some chips that do have can peripheral esp 32 and series stm 32 f 405 sam e 51 some chips that don't have can peripheral at megas sam d 21 sam d 51 rp 20 40 although somebody Once did a pio hacked version, but pretty much it doesn't have a peripheral built in n r f 52 series doesn't have can The imx rt 10 11 doesn't have can built in the tc 4 does have can so you would use this with the tc 4 again You have to have that peripheral connect the rx and tx On this board. We also have a little boost converter on the left that'll generate the five volts required from three volts power So you don't need to have a separate five volt power input and there's a switch on it for the termination So it's a good idea to have termination at the beginning and end of your can Line because you have like all these devices on it If you want to add termination flip the switch and it says 60 ohms with 60 ohms on every on each side high and low It's 120 ohms total want to clarify that because I think it might be confusing So on the other side you get the terminal blocks with low high and common ground So that's the canvas transceiver If you're bored and my controller have can peripheral Start the show besides you lady data or team Customers or community everybody who makes this thing go is Here he is Okay, but let's say your microcontroller doesn't have a can peripheral and you want to add a camper so I want Okay, you've come to their place. You want to use the can bus wing which features the mcp 2515 over spi The can 2515 it's a slightly older chip, but you know what it's reliable It's inexpensive and it's available right now, which is really important um, so this chip is partnered with a tja 1051 dash t dash slash three sorry tja 1051 t Slash three which is a three volt logic level can transceiver We also have a little five volt boost generator to give you a clean five volt So it can communicate on the can bus lines And this basically adds a can peripheral to any microcontroller that Doesn't have it built in as I mentioned for the can pal ESP 32 has can peripheral tc 4 has can peripheral sam e 51 does as well and the stm 32 f 405 But most low-cost mode controllers do not in which case you plug this in it communicates over the spi lines Plus it needs a cs pin an interrupt pin and boom you have now Can bus for any microcontroller board. So let's go to the overhead and I will show you What it looks like okay, so Zoom exactly and focus Okay, so this is it. I just you know plugged it on to Uh, you know, this is a uh A uh, let's see. This is a um sam d 21 or nr Sorry, it's uh at mega 32 u4 feather A perfect example of a chip that does not have can bus But let's see you want to send messages back and forth you plug this in it communicates with the mcp 25 15 There's code in like every platform has code for the this chip. It's extremely common It's kind of like the can transceiver chip that everyone uses um And then it sends messages to and from this And then um over here is a terminal block. You can use the uh The wires here you plug into h and l through the transceiver. This is the transceiver The can bus lines you can connect to a can bus and send and receive messages Very nicely up to I think one megabit per second speed. It's very very fast um Over here if you want you can get a de9 Um, so like, you know, like a serial port connector and you can Sotter it. Um, they straddle they can get this versions. It's linked off the product page You solder it in and then you can connect this to like an odb port a lot of them either have a Or can devices have a de9 db D sub connector or you can connect it to an odb cable if you want to connect to a car Um, there's on board termination here. This is like the 120 ohm And then you can cut this if you don't want to have the termination because you're adding this Into an existing can bus line that's only terminated and then uh, we also have um the reset and silent pins You know, you probably don't need them but if you if you do want them and then on back We connect the uh chip selected interrupt pins automatically to uh, gpao 5 and 6 but you can um Pat them and uh, we assign those pins if you like just solder a jumper from these pads Over to uh, whatever you like. So this is you know, any feather you want to use with can bus very common in robotics again automotive um automation but also it's you know, it's great because i'm like I squared c any device can send a signal at any time. So it's great for Um, large networks where you don't want to have to have like one polling controller and multiple peripherals Unlike you or you can have multiple devices. There's a priority queue built in Um, it's differential. So it's great in noisy environments. And you know, it's it's a pretty low-cost Way to connect to existing devices that use can very commonly used. Um You know a lot of electronics and automotive robotics and such but I think could also be used by In general makers who want to connect multiple micro controllers together using only two wires We asked can we do it? We did we can that's new bars Yeah, so it's been revealed that that's why the code is we can Okay, okay. Okay. So you can post up your questions. I have some lined up. We're gonna do some top secret. Okay Okay, top secret. Um, we're gonna play some videos. We have a tester video a little bit of the dvi Uh stuff we're gonna play and we even know it was a coming soon We have a video with that and then we'll balance right back and answer your questions that you're posting up in discord All right lady. What is this? Hey, I'm doing more conversion of testers from using 18c 3.6 To rp 20 40. This is the pid 5303 which is our esp 32 s2 feather with me 280 And uh, I'm uploading the test code over usb And then the tester output comes here test the pogo. Well, it doesn't actually take 5000 seconds, but Because it's been on for a while But um, this test is gonna be a lot more reliable than using a tco or raspberry pi So i'm really psyched and it just uses an rp 20 40 to do usb bitbang host And then um, I like that it has analog inputs unlike a raspberry pi because it can check the voltage of the battery and 5 volt power supply on here. So it's going to go through and test these all Hey there. What's this? This is my prototype for the feather rp 20 40 with dvi output Um, this is an rp 20 40 with all the fixings stomach qt and a dvi output port So let's try it out. We'll plug in the dvi first. We got this standard hdmi cable and then Plug in the usb and it starts up and then In a moment one working minds Yeah, it takes a second for this monitor to recognize it's got input We've got 320 by 240. Sorry. This is 800 by 480, but it's pixel doubled. So on the the internal Memory it thinks it's 400 by 240 and even better it can run off of a battery because it's a feather So there you go turning soon to the ate a fruit shop. All right jumping right into questions. Thanks so much everyone for Waiting if you post them earlier. We got them all. Here we go. Uh, first up Uh, question for the engineer. I've reversed by said the battery on a feather s3 versus tft. I need to swap out a lipo H chip. What heat would you use? Uh, or would you use your new heat gun on to attempt at avoiding melting the screen on the back? I've got aluminum tape on plastic bits as a token gesture I would not I would just not use the battery on it. I mean if the feather works out the battery just Keep moving on because you risk damaging it even more. Sorry Um, our terminator is required at the end of ken margules You'll want terminator on the end of you know, the each end If you have a long string and that just I mean I've looked on an oscilloscope And it does help because there's like a pull-up Um, you know or like the capacitance and the pull-up will create a little bit of a curving To the traces. So yeah, like you just have the termination on either end and you're good to go Okay, um the aether fruit feather rp2040 with dvi output port will fill a full screen of an hd tv monitor Or will it be centered and have a black box frame about a tv would be Yeah, what your tv will do is if you pipe 640 by 480 it will just fill the screen And it will do a black bar either at the top or the bottom to get the aspect ratio, but the the the screen will max out you won't get like a teeny Like you won't be terrible Like a postage stamp in the middle It automatically scales it it has a scaler built in it automatically scales it But you might have a black bar, you know if your screen is like a wide screen You're gonna have black bars on the side because the aspect ratio isn't 640 by 480 or 4 by 3 Yeah Or whatever 640 by 480 is yeah, we're thinking for that particular product a lot of people will be able to do cool art Because you have to be a scent or something You know a lot of people have tv's and they're just off most of the time and it's not really it's in the center It's in the most valuable real estate in home, but you don't get to create things for it Like lean a little no like all fun things Um, I think believe it or not that might just be the questions Okay, we were answering some of the chat earlier We got to the most Yeah Move that's it. Okay. Thanks everybody. Okay. That is our show for this evening everyone Thank you so much for joining us special. Thanks to Takara behind the scenes. Hey Takara Nice car. I have to um Email Takara. We were gonna have a video Kido chat. Yeah, we were gonna have because I'm like, yeah. Anyways, um, I wanted to show our little kiddo And thanks to all the aid for community members the entire team that's been keeping things going everything that helps make this show go if you want to save a buck or two and um make it go and support our team Which has benefits and 401k and all the things that everyone wants and a cool job career opportunities more Um, the only way we do this because we don't have loans or venture capital is if you buy something Yeah, and Phil actually spent our entire savings account on open ai chat gpt prompts for uh star trek fan fiction I got the ball open ai dot com chat gpt and it was like five billion dollars. How many fan fictions did you have the right? A lot So neil neilix I have this neilix arc of the story recipe generator and I just say I couldn't stop myself. No, just kidding. It all goes to our employees. Yeah Um, so thank you if you buy something, but if you don't that's okay, too. Um Make something sure Rising tide rise raises all boats as I said, so we'll see everybody next week. Thanks so much Here is Your moment of zener. Thanks everybody. Bye