 Welcome to school today. Hey everybody and welcome to my desk. As you can see, I've been re-pinkified. A lot of hardware going on on my desk today. It's a long weekend for some folks, so if so, I hope you have a good long weekend. All right, let's go straight to the computer and I'll talk about some of these displays. I've got much more TFT displays that work with the qualia board. The qualia board is in...well, it wasn't stuck. Yeah, it's still in stock, so you can pick some up. And we've got bar displays, square displays. I think we've shown on this show as I've been trying to get them working. And this week, in addition, Melissa wrote up a guide. She's like the mayor of Display Town, Maris, I don't know, Queen of Display Town. So she's done a lot of the display work for e-inks and TFTs, and so it made sense for her to also write this guide. So we have Circuit Python support, and she's got quick start details. Let me see if I can get the one moment. Circuit Python display setup. So she's got basically all the init codes converted, and so all these displays, you need the exact init code to make them work, the timings, and then a ready-to-go example in Circuit Python that will have the wepl show up. You can see here that wepl is appearing. And one of the things that...as I've been playing with these displays, they're definitely...and you can see more...these are draft pages. Getting these displays working, it's definitely one of those...it doesn't work until it's 100% perfect, and I think a lot of people are...I've noticed, especially with a similar board, the Matrix Portal, it's like, is the display broken, or is the board broken, and it's like, there's a lot of this back and forth, like we don't know which half might not be working. And so what I decided to do is create ready-to-go...this ready-to-go demo, which I think we chatted about on a previous desk of Ladiator. I used ChatGPT to write this cool color wheel that is kind of like the NeoPixel Rainbow demo, but for displays. And this is what it looks like. It makes like this, you know, it's circular here. But basically, we got a 360-degree hue and saturation circle, or sorry, green-blue circle. And so to get people going like really fast, I decided what I was going to do is, you know, I basically recompiled this code for each display. You know, if you look at the...let me actually do the preview. Hold on. Yeah, okay, here. So how interesting this did not initialize the latest code. Okay, hold on. So here is...sorry, I might not have committed. So what I did is, you know, for each display, I have this commented out section where it's like, okay, do you have the 2.8 square round bar display? I have the init code ready to go and you just uncomment it and it's the same display code, maybe, but for different resolutions. And then I also updated the color wheel demo. The original demo was hard coded, which this should be. So you see it's hard coded to 240 by 240. And I was like, oh, you don't have to update this to be for any size because I have these bar displays and I have like square and I have like different resolutions. And I was like, about to like adjust it. And then I was like, oh, wait, I'll just go back and ask CheckGPT to update it. So I just said, hey, you know, I'm back. I like to juice myself and say, hey, I'm back. Hey, remember like we wrote this code, you know, a couple weeks ago. And so just making sure I had that context. And then I was like, great, can you just update it to be width and height dependent, not like hard coded to 40 by 240. And actually did all of it. And it's like, it's always kind of, you know, like, you're not sure if it's like, oh, divided by two, or like, is it subtract from one, you know, like it's kind of hard to remember. It's only for the bar display, right, with the width and the height are not the same. I didn't want to like have them swapped. And so I, you know, having done that, I updated the, so I updated the code here to what CheckGPT for suggested. And then I built these UF2. So if we go to the overhead, I can show, like this is our, it's so big, it takes up the entire screen. So this is our ginormous four inch display. And you can see the, it's much more vibrant in person, of course, but this rainbow display on here, I will say it does flicker a little bit. And I think that's because I'm still in Arduino using IDF, like I think 4.4. In circuit Python, we now use IDF 5. Thanks to Scott. If you checked out his videos, he did an update to implement IDF, ESP IDF 5.1 in circuit Python. And one of the things that it improved was the RGB TTL display supports much more stable, greatly improved. But what's nice is that, you know, I can double click this reset button. And it goes into bootloader mode. And of course, this gets all weirded out. Actually, I'll show you something interesting. If you, so it's kind of a kind of a neat effect. Let me just reset this. So this is just, you know, the rainbow demo. If you, oh, actually this is not going to work. But if you put in, let's say this is a 3.4 inch, this isn't going to work at all, because this is a different chip set. This is the SS 7701. But let me put it into bootloader mode. And then I'll just, I'll just drag and drop this onto here. One thing I've noticed is that the ESP32, uh-oh. Oh no, my hub is broken. Can I reset my hub? Yeah, let's see why not. Just wanted live demos. Okay. That broke. That's okay. I got another one. Weird. Oh no, my hub is definitely not working. Okay, well, forget it. Pretend that I had the demo show up on all of these. Let me give her one more try. My hub is like, by the way, there's nothing like doing hardware design on Windows to make your operating system USB core like totally freak out. Okay, it seems like it, it recovered somewhat. Let's try. I'll try uploading it again. Sometimes, sometimes when you threaten the demo and say, like, fine, I'm giving up on the demo, the demo's like, oh, I'm going to get it together. Let's see, and then, nope, it reset too fast. Sorry. There you go. So now, um, you know, I just installed the version for the square display. So that's kind of nice. And then I was going to show is that if you swap out the display without changing the code, sometimes you get like a cool like glitchy effect or not. You know what? It's okay. I'm going to move on. Okay. Um, all right. I'm not having good demo luck. That's okay. All right. So let's move on to another demo which might work. Um, so this is, uh, another piece of hardware I'm working on. So this is the USB host feathering. I think, I don't know if I chatted about this on the show or in, um, I don't think I brought this onto Descaladiata, but, um, this allows using, uh, allow, allows implementing a USB host interface. It's a USB type A connection, um, with any microcontroller. So it doesn't have to be an RP2040. Has a little boost converter, uh, USB type A connection. And then if we go to the computer in a second, I am having a update. Oh boy. I don't want to connect directly, but sorry. Let's try restarting again. Just connect some items too. Lots of USB stuff happening. Okay. Let me see if that, uh, uh, I'll, I'll, I'll move on to, uh, other stuff. Nope. Okay. My camera's not working today. Well, despite it not working, let me show the, um, the example code. So in Tina USB, you don't have to believe me that I had it working. Um, under dual role, um, you can actually have it connected with the USB host shield when it works. And, um, it will appear as, um, you know, USB host, you can plug in a USB serial cable like this one and it'll actually like appear as a, you know, a software serial or like a, you know, software implemented serial called USB, uh, sorry, serial host, and you can read and write to it. So you have something like, um, a GPS or I was actually having it connected up to this, um, ESP 32. Let me do it one more attempt. Wow, it's just not working, huh? Okay. No. Um, I'm sorry, definitely worked before. Um, you can connect it directly to USB host and, um, read to it. So for example, I had this wired up to a GPS. Um, you have like a USB GPS, so you have like a ESP 32 board, um, that has built-in serial. My hub is now like randomly turning on and off. Um, and you can read and write from it. Um, maybe I'll have the demo ready for next week. I guess, you know, might have to probably reboot my computer or something. But, uh, it happens. Um, all right. So, uh, USB host feather wing, gonna work on that and, um, you know, I think that's probably gonna be, um, coming out in like maybe like a month or so, maybe a month or two, and then we'll add a circuit python support. But right now it does have Arduino support. If you have like a USB host shield, and a lot of people do, uh, do try this out. It should work because it's the same Max 3421 chip. All right. Well, uh, USB is cursed, but that's okay. Um, let's go on to the great search. The great search brought to you by Digikey and Adafruit. Thank you so much. Digikey, every single lady to use their power of engineer and help you, yes, you find things on digikey.com. Lady Adafruit, what are you searching for this week? Okay. So, um, this is actually, sometimes I just look online and I'm like, hey, what, I'm like, I read the blogs and stuff. And I saw this post, it was just a couple of weeks ago, um, from OH eight hubs. And they had this post, you know, about, they were using, um, one of those like chee chargers or like a mag charger with their phone and second Apple device. And, um, they were doing VHF work and they actually were noticing that there was some radio interference on VHF. And, um, they showed, Oh, hey, you know, if you ever have a device and like these are, you know, the whole thing is EMI machine, like it manufactures EMI. Um, and so it, you know, if it, you know, maybe it was not within the spec or maybe it was, you know, I don't know. But they said, Oh, they really reduced it by putting on a clamp on ferrite, uh, bead. And I was like, Oh yeah, those are really useful. Um, let's go to the overhead because I happen to have a cable that has these built in. So this is what you normally see. Uh, this is a USB cable. Um, I mean, although you don't see it as much anymore, although I don't know why, but maybe like USB hoser or USB devices are, um, better at reducing EMI in different ways. Maybe they have like inline resistors or like, uh, lower drive strength. But, uh, this cable, um, USB to mini has a, um, ferrite bead implemented or installed on both ends, which is like pretty serious. Um, maybe it was required for the product that this shipped with, uh, who knows, but, um, these are molded in. Um, and you know, if you can get molded in great, but as you saw, there's some cases where you have a device post installation where you want a clamp on ferrite bead. Um, and you know, you would use a test equipment to determine whether or not it's passing, um, the EMI floor that you're looking for. They're not like specified for like, oh, this will reduce EMI by this much. If they're specified by, you know, the width and thickness, inner diameter, outer diameter material. Um, but there's no like magic number like, Oh, use this size for this frequency to reduce it this much. It does depend a lot about the product that you're using, the cable length, you know, the drive strength, the amount of current, draw, et cetera, et cetera. So, um, let's find, you know, then they were like, they did, uh, go through the data sheet and, um, check it out. I think they bought it from a British company, but turns out did you key stocks this stuff as well? So, let's go to the computer and I'll show you. You can get, uh, ferrite. So, you know, in general, people use ferrites, um, as chips and we use this in a lot of our designs, like an inline ferrite between your digital and analog, uh, power. It has some resistance at high frequencies and the resistance increases. So like at high frequencies, the resistance is higher at low frequencies, the resistance is basically zero. Um, and so if you set it up like as an RC filter, it kind of blocks that high frequency noise from coming through. Um, there's also cores if you want to, of course, make your own inductors. I don't know how many people do that these days, but what we want are cable ferrites and you saw even the icon was indicative. So a lot of these come, um, you know, like for the cable we showed where you would put it on and then mold over it. Um, this one's kind of cool. It has like two apertures. You can have, you know, two areas. Uh, there's also flat cables, um, you know, for, for, uh, ribbons. Um, I think, you know, I don't want to pull out my apple to, um, floppy drive, but I remember it had like some, I think it had a ribbon cable and a ferrite that the ribbon won't go. But we want one that's clamp on. So let's, first off, let's go only for active because we don't want to get something that isn't available right now. And for design, there's a couple, there's clamp clipped together and hinge. And I think like we should just do all of those. I'll also get the dash just in case, uh, we need it. And then let's also only look for in stock. And that gives us a lot of options, like 270 options. Um, all those look pretty good. So this is what they look like, right? And you put the cable through. Um, you can, uh, they are specified for the resistance at, you know, high frequency, usually like, like 30 megahertz or 100 megahertz. Um, the higher the homage, the more resistant it's going to be at those high frequencies. But, you know, it also will, you know, the, you might have to pay more, but they might be bigger. So you'll have to decide what size you want. Um, let's see what else we want. I think, I think we want only the round type. And so let's do that. And then the material, um, the material is going to like, you know, affect the, um, that response curve as you saw. You know, what I did is actually, I just actually looked like, what is like the most popular one? And, uh, there were, you know, quite a few options. Um, it looks like fair right, which is like fair right, but like fair right, just was a good name. Um, the one, you know, there, a lot of these are good. I think I found this one, you know, they had 43,000 stock is nice and small. What I liked is that, you know, it had a pretty big, um, inner diameter, you know, a quarter inch wide cable can fit through it. Um, so this would do a job very well. Uh, and of course it clips on and off. Once you've clipped it on, you might want to, um, use some tape or something to keep it. You don't want it to slide up and down. You want it to be like, you know, near the connector. And then of course, in the datasheet, um, you know, this is clearly layered. This is their thing. They will give you, um, you know, what is the resistance at the frequency, the impedance at the frequency. So depending on the frequency that you want to block, you know, you'll want to get one different materials, LF, 28, HF, these are different materials. If you want to block out gigahertz, one gigahertz HF is going to be like your bag. But if you're like, no, I need to block everything over, you know, five to 10 megahertz or something. Uh, you want LF. So choose the different material. Um, looks like they've got some good ideas. This is kind of my nice datasheet. And then of course they will give you the specs for all of the different sizes, including, um, there's CAD files and, uh, dimensional data. So it looks like they kind of have everything covered. Um, you know, I don't know if this person was, you know, I think they've kind of just bought a couple of different, um, beads and they do have bead kits, I think at Digikey. And they just clip on the one until, I mean, I remember talking to an engineer and they said to pass FCC, you just like, you just try different ferrite clamps until like basically, uh, it passes. So, and then that's the one that you ship your product with. So this is my pick, but there are many, many, many options. So don't notice this is one of a wide variety of wide variety of hinged ferrite course. That's a great search. All right. And that is our show for tonight. Yes. I'll get my live demos working for next week or maybe it's like, it's cool. Yeah. But you guys get the idea. Um, maybe we'll shoot some video later this week too. We'll see everybody during the week. Thanks so much for joining us. See you next week. Bye everybody.