 The great search Roger by Digikey native here. Thank you so much Digikey every single week Lady did user powered of engineering to help you find you yes you things on Digikey comm that are probably hard to find or maybe need help getting that part or who knows because it's been an adventure in the world of Chip shortages like a bank of finding more. What is this week's great search? Okay? Let's go to the overhead real fast I've realized one of the things that you know I've been doing is I'm experimenting with slight component changes like I've gotten so used to some of our parts that I thought for the new year I kind of explore variations So for example Almost all of our boards have these little tactile buttons these you know, I call them mini tactiles They're like three by six two by five millimeter ish Tactile buttons and I use them all the time for reset buttons or mode selects you know, I've got them here on this KB 2040 for the boot and reset button and These are good, but I was thinking you know, these have a little little mini actuators And I noticed that I saw some folks with boards that have these larger actuators like Pimerone uses some of them I've seen one with some other Doughnut boards I've seen masked it on toots about and so I thought I'd got some of these and use them I rather like them like it's a little bit bigger of an actuator but it's still very clicky and I think it's you know It's maybe a little bit easier to press because there's a little bit more surface area a little more tactile So I thought I would show this part because I didn't realize that this was available on ditch keys actually available at a very good price, so let's go to the website and find them So first off, I don't want to mention that SD card that I showed for this board The little micro SD the skinny one if you're like, oh, I really like that skinny micro SD card We covered this in an earlier great search. So go check that out and then if you want to ate a logger, but feathering format Check that out, too. And you can see actually Interestingly enough this has a kind of a wider oval actuator This is the original KM R2 button that we use so that button footprint is the same But the actuator size has varied over time. So let's um Let's go to the key So we call these well, so originally If you look at all my schematics, I call these KMR twos Because that's the original even if I don't necessarily use that exact part number anymore And that's not what we are going to find here But I did want to show it. So this is the KMR twos You know, you can see that kind of oval actuator and then The size is about five by three millimeters again the size of my very so i'm not going to check that box Because I want to find similar switches. So let's find active spst The switch function off mom means It's off normally and then momentarily when you press it it turns on. So that's what I want The contact rating is not important to me because I don't use these as power switches I use them only for signaling. So it's like they're passing, you know Micro amps at three volts. So I don't care about that um, they are surface mount They're top actuated um The actuator height I don't want to select because I you know that might vary the termination style might vary The outline might vary, uh, non illuminated operating force May vary and then switch travel and mechanical life may vary. So let's see what What pops up here? This should give me quite a few options So looking down, um, you see kind of these standard. These are the six by six millimeter tack dials Um, these are very very popular, right? They're very expensive. This kind has a little Nub long actuators extra long You can see this is sort of similar to what we're looking for but let's let's uh pare it down. So the most important thing is The sizing so remember that size was kind of like four and a half to 2.8. It's basically five by three The only thing is is that it's like You know, it may vary. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to select Uh, a range of parts. I'm going to do 4.6 by 2.8 and then, um Let's see six by three point two And let me see. I don't want to go bigger than six There's a couple of sizes here that might be close enough Let's see 4.2 by 2.8 4.2 by 3.2. They're definitely not square. You know, they're rectangular But the size might uh vary a little bit. I think these are some good Options though Okay, well, let's see what uh What pops up here Okay, cool So, um, so you can see this is kind of what I'm looking at. So these you can see some of these have round actuators and some have like really big pillowy ones Um, so for me, what's important is pricing. So let's look at pricing for 5 000 because I'm going to be buying a lot of these Uh, and then of course if the operating force is important to you, you can select it to me Because it's rarely used. It's just a tactile switch. It's not that important Um, so you'll see uh, some bigger switches got put in here because of the sizing. So this is six by Uh, 3.3 and then these are some other Six by three. So let's go move those. Let's go only the 4.7s I'm gonna get rid of those. Okay, cool. Um And here we are. So, uh, we've got a couple options. You've got ones with the uh, black actuator Uh, white. This one looks like it's a little bit taller um I ended up going with the arcade But I do want to show that there's a lot of different options Like if you want if you do want the little tiny Button those are available and if you like, uh, you know white actuator that's cool but what I really liked was these arcades because First off, they're you know, fairly inexpensive all these these pts ones are also very inexpensive about 10 cents 11 cents um But you can get them either 250 gram force actuations a little bit tougher or 160 gram force and uh You know, both are the same package 4.2 by 3.2 And even though these, um oops these might Uh, let's see if the other one has a little bit Better now, uh Even though this one it says it doesn't have an image at the bottom But I do have the the data sheet up here So the footprint even though the the size, you know might vary by point one millimeter here and there The footprint actually worked exactly the same like I used my standard KMR 2 footprint and I used this part and um You know the overhead real fast You can see it, uh Fits very nicely it picks in place very nicely It has four solder points and I rather like this button. So, you know, and this is a 250 gram force It's particularly clicky, but I kind of like that. I like the force feedback of um a high tactile high clickiness button So I'm going to probably be moving, you know, a lot of my boards, especially new ones over from these smaller tactile to these uh nice larger ones These buttons are a little bit less expensive and I like the uh nice oval actuator as well. So congratulations the rkb you have uh One over the KMR 2 to win for the button of the week and that's a great search