 and welcome to this lady Aida. Hey everybody and welcome to my desk. It's me, Lady Aida, with me, Mr. Lady Aida on camera control behind the scenes and your updates. So we're back to our shows. Everything's back. We're doing a bunch of new camera setups and everything. So you'll notice like lighting's a little bit better. Sound will be different. So we're just experimenting with stuff because we're condensing all of our shows into like maybe one multimedia station. Multiple shows, but like instead of, we usually have like different cameras and state locations. We're gonna unify it a little bit. Yeah, so we're not going to the Aida Fruit Factory, well, sorry, we're not staying at the Aida Fruit Factory at night because we have a baby now. So instead of staying there all the way till nine o'clock at night, we go home and we do our shows live and- From my desk. From your desk and we also have a kiddo. A kiddo is super nice and quiet and chill and enjoys listening to her mom talk about electronics. So with that being said- Speaking up. What do you want to know to speak? So this week, because we actually, a lot of people got back from holiday and we got back from our break and so we started, we started the show. So not as much engineering happened this week. A lot of it was mostly just kind of catching up with everybody, what's going on the last six weeks or so, starting, you know, getting people started on projects for the new year. Some really cool projects coming out already. I've, you know, dished out some really fun engineering projects to people. We're gonna take on some interesting new quests. Plus there's a lot more new chips coming out and chips that are coming back into stock. As I mentioned in the last, you know, couple months, the chip shortage, while it's not over, has been a lot, lot better. In fact, it's sort of turning into a chip surplus which you might have seen like Samsung said, wait, we have too many chips now. Which is why we didn't start Chip Fab. Everyone's like, you know, buy a chip fabrication factory. It's like, no, that takes like 10 years and we're pretty busy and also now there's a chip surplus. So what I've been doing recently is first off, we're trying to get a lot of stuff back into stock. We're gonna re-start some old designs. There's a lot of designs where, you know, they were kind of ready to go or they were about to be revised in like 2020. And then with various shortages and inabilities to get stuff done, like some stuff did get revised, but there are some things that were, if it had like three revisions involved, I kind of, kind of emotionally gave up on it and said, you know, I'll just, I'll just check it out when I can get everything. So one of them is this TFT feather wing. Let's go to the overhead. So a few, two weeks ago, I think I talked about the one point, let's see, let me auto focus and then focus walk. Okay. I talked about how I'm trying to change some of my hand soldered TFT and OLED displays into plug inversion. So I checked out those previous shows because the 0.96 and 1.14 inch TFTs, traditionally they're hand soldered. So this is what it looks like underneath. So, you know, these are hand soldered and then taped using, you know, traditionally you'd use a hot bar machine. We soldered by hand. So one, the hand soldering does take a lot of labor and it's, if we're making enough of it, it's better for me to make a double sided design with a TFT plugin. And second, this TFT actually got discontinued and then the TFT shortage showed up and the TFT prices like quadrupled or tripled. And I was like, you know, I'm just gonna wait. And then I've been using, I was using a seesaw, SAMD09, and then the prices on those went up a lot. And then I was like, should I change it to an AT tiny? And then basically like three things went kind of a miss with this design. And I just sort of said, like, I'm giving up on this for now. Let's revisit this later and, you know, maybe update it when I can get all of the pieces or maybe I'll redo all the pieces. So let's go to the computer and I'll show what I'm going to change. So, sorry, this was, so one, you know, before like during kind of COVID time, what I was trying to do was like, oh, I'll update this 0.96 TFT. Cause when I design this feather, I can only get the 0.96 160 by 80. But then the really ultra high dense 1.14 inch TFT came out, which is 240 by 135, which is like really even, you know, which is much better, much higher density. And so I started redesigning this to use the 1.14 and then use instead of the SAMD, sorry, I'd still use the SAMD09. But then like I said, I couldn't like the SAMD09, I could get it, but the price was really high. And I was like, ah, I'm like not so into it. Especially since the seesaw chip, the only thing it was really doing was controlling the backlight TFT and doing button reading. And then reset, it was one GPIO output, like eight GPIO input and one PWM output for the backlight. And at the time, there's like no chip that did all three things. No IO controller that I could use. I did input, output, and PWM. But then recently, one of the breakout boards that we added was the AW9523. And this GPIO expander is actually kind of neat because it actually does both input and output and can do constant current PWM output for backlight control. So it's actually kind of perfect for this use. And I want to, and also the price of it is really good. It's basically cheaper than the SAM D09. I don't have to program it. So there's no risk of like the chip getting erased or like misflashed or, you know, like that extra step where I have to SWD program it. So I want to update this design to use that instead of what I've got right now, which is the, that SAM D09 doing the breakout board control. So, so show you what I have. So basically everything's changing. And another thing that happened is I changed the large buttons, these small buttons. But I think what's going to happen is because I'm changing this to be, let me save this as, actually I already have a rev. I'll just save this here. So the first thing is, let me turn off the, I mean, we're about the whole thing. Let me get rid of the traces because none of these are going to stay. So the first thing is I'm changing this hand solder TFT to be a plugin. So let's do that first. So this TFT is, let me update all the libraries because I have a new package for the plugin version. Hold on, you look at it, it's thinking. Okay, that's fine. So if I add, somehow I have like a 16 core processor and Eagle Cat still is just like constantly thinking. Okay. For the TFTs, so I've got generic TFT hand solder. Actually, let me just look at Adafruit display, which is my library with all my displays. And it was called, yeah, generic SPI, no LED A. So, so it's actually no LED K. So the one thing, yeah, I got both the 0.96 and the 1.14. Sorry, no LED, yes, no LED cathode. So the only thing that's a little different about this is that, you know, this is, I made it kind of like a compatible footprint, but you'll notice there's no cathode for the LED. The LED, for these plugins, you know, to save pins, they don't have both the LED cathode and the anode exposed. The cathode actually connects to ground, which is actually a good idea because the power supply for the LEDs might be different than the power supplies for the chip, but it just means you have to change the logic for the backlight to be inverted. Okay, so if I plug this in over here, and then I'm gonna align this to be the same, so it'll be like here, that, and then it'll get rid of the hand solder version. And then the LED, and then it'll click to the backlight. I can check the, you know, well, I may or may not, like if it's, I'm changing so much for more in software anyways. Maybe it's not a big deal, I'll just have the example code. So it's logically inverted. Okay, so next up, I'm gonna get rid of this SAMD09. Goodbye. And instead, I'm going to import the breakout board for the GPIO. I think, where do I put it under? Okay, it's under multiplexers. I think we would see now. It's under, I can't remember where. It's under ADCs, audio, clock gen co-processors. Level shifters? No, not under PWM, under LED drivers. Oh yeah, under LED drivers. Okay, so I added this sheet, which just kind of brings in all the pins and they're all labeled nicely. But I'll still delete all the headers because I don't need the headers. And I'll delete, you know what? Maybe I'll keep the STEMAQT port. I'll delete the mounting holes and the fiducials. So you see it's kind of like hanging out down here. And I think I'll keep one STEMAQT port because that might be handy. People can like, oh, if it's double-sided anyways, like I'll just, I'll have it on the bottom. And then I'll select this and drag it over here and I give them, oop, delete this sheet. Okay, so then I'll clean this up and I will delete and I was like, don't delete everything. So now I've got this, this chip is gonna be the expander instead of the seesaw. And I'm going to, you know, this was at a quirky angle. Change that back to normal. And I want to put this on the back because now it's double-sided. I might as well put it on the back. I can put this on the back and this on the back. And then I'm actually going to change this package back to be six millimeters because I actually kind of like, I like that size. And then this can kind of shift over a little bit. And then this like barely fits. Let's see if I can change. This is change package. I'm gonna use smaller. It's like a tiny, tiny bit smaller. So yeah, now I'm back to kind of how it was before. And yeah, it's a double-sided design now. But like I said, you know, I'm kind of stuck with that because I want to have this plug-in TFT. But the good news is that there's no hand soldering. And there's not an unpopular feather wing. And one of the things that like takes time is hand soldering those TFTs. So make it double-sided, have that plug-in on the back. So the only thing you have to do is add a cut-out like here. So I'm gonna add that now before I forget. And I will do that with the lines tool. Oops. And then you just make a cut-out by using a dimensional rectangle. And then kind of move it out of the way. And have a slot. And this is great because then the FPC will come out and we'll have plenty of space to tape it down. And it will plug in onto the back here. And then I just have to like kind of, you know, route everything and arrange it. But I have lots of space. I'll get rid of all the silk screen. The silk screen obviously is not even correct anymore. So let's get this out of the way. And then- Is it hard to know exactly where to put the cut-out? No, because I actually played with this before. And so I know you can see that there's this outline here. Let me move this text over here. This'll probably move over here. And then this'll kind of scooch. And then this I'll rotate. And so you can see where the FPC comes out. This is a little like a jiggly line. So I just kind of make it like a millimeter more. And that way I can see, like when I document the footprint on the back, I like to document where the flex connector goes. That way I know like I can put components where it won't overlap. And also like it told me like, okay, I just need to have this slot here. But then I'm pretty much good to go. So I'll finish routing this and I'll send out prototype PCBs. But I actually kind of like the, moving the CSAP chip to the AW9523 is kind of like, it was like all three pieces came together. It's like, oh, I can get the TFT for the FPC plugin. I could get the AW9523, it's now available. It's at a low cost. And we got enough other boards revised and I was ready to like bring this one back to life. So there's like six or seven different designs that kind of went through this. You know, like things where three or four parts went out of stock and I was like, ah, you know, I need a break, but we'll bring this back. So for the great search, I thought I'd show. Let's do two quick questions. Oh yeah, sure. Ready? Yeah. Have you ever done equal tutorials? And the next one is, what is this socket for the TFT display make it expensive? There's no such thing as a ZIF socket for an FPC. So there's flip top, but this isn't flip. This isn't a bottom contact. It's a top contact. So you have to use a little slide out. And we have equal CAD tutorials on the learning system. Some very good ones. How will the new chip change the code for using it? It's gonna be a new code, but you know, like I said, the TFT is changing also. So there's like so many things changing that if you're going to make one change, make all the changes you want and this will make it easier to manufacture and less expensive. I guess it's the fault. Even just in the library backend. I mean, it's, that's not how the, we don't have a library for this display. Like we have example code. Okay, all right, cool. But it's like a popular display type and the AW9523, we have library code too. So it's not so bad. All right. And do you want to get onto the great search? Yeah, let's go to the great search and we'll show you on the overhead. Yeah. Where? The great search brought to you by, did you key need fruit? Thanks, did you key? This is the time of the week where LadyAid uses the power of engineering to help you. Yes, you find the chips, parts and more that you need. LadyAid, what are you looking for this week? I'm glad you asked. This week I've been doing a redesign of a TFT feather wing and the TFT feather has an interesting navigation switch on it. And I realized this is a pretty cool weird part that I would like to show because the original manufacturer like stopped making it, but there's an alternative that's basically pink compatible. So let's go to the overhead and I'll show it off. Okay. So one thing that's, you know, if you're adding buttons in a user interface to a project, you know, it's very common to have like a navigation thing like up, down, left, right. And then usually a select so you can go through a menu or you can change specifications. This is a little joystick as well. That's another option. And this is, this one doesn't have a select. It's only a two-axis joystick, but usually, you know, you'll have this and then maybe you'll have a select button next to it. We don't also have a joystick. We recently put into the shop that is through-hole but does have a select on it. Get some good focus here. This nav switch is one that I like quite a bit. So these nav switches, they're a little bit more compact than a joystick and they're not, this is, you know, true analog joysticks. We need two ADCs, X and Y, and you can measure, you know, in the center it's, you know, ADC, VDD divided by two. And then as you go left and right, it goes from zero to VDD. The, these navigation switches, they, yeah, they tilt. You can kind of see that they tilt left, right, up, and down, and they do have a select. And they're kind of clicky because they really are five mechanical switches. So I call them five-way navigation switches, although some would say it's two axes plus select, different ways of talking about it. But I like them because they're not that much bigger than like two tactile switches and they're definitely smaller than four tactile switches. And they're very logical. You're like, oh, it's a little joystick. Like I understand what you want me to do. You're, you know, you want me to move up, down, left, right. And so in case people wanted to add these to their products, I thought I'd show this part and some other parts on Digikey, there's a couple navigation switches. Okay. So this is the, just show this, this was the design and this is the footprint. So it's nice is that it has five switches and then they have one common and five pin connections. So it looks like this, you know, one common up, up, down, left, right, and then select in. So you just need four GPIO pins and you connect the common to either ground or power, whichever one you want and you just need pull-ups. So, and then here is just in case you want to see a nice big picture. Oh, here it is. So this is the, what it looks like in big, big letters. So these are called navigation switches. And so watch out, because there's also thumb sticks, right? And that's kind of similar. And sometimes they are grouped together, but thumb sticks tend to be just small joy sticks that are analog. So you see these, these A PIMP switches, I mean, these are very fancy, you know, we have this one. Like I said, this is XY, but not select in. Some of these have select, some of them don't, but thumb switches tend to be analog to access. So instead what we want is, I'll go to the entire category, navigation switches. Now what I'll see is there's some really good stuff here and like the thing about navigation switches is there's a wide range of the navigation joy sticks. They're from like very tiny ones. Like this one is very small. This is, you know, maybe eight millimeters by eight millimeters, these are very tiny. And they're, you know, pick and play surface mount to like large joy sticks from like Gray Hill with like a gigantic IDC connector. So they're all slightly different. You know, like here's this big M1 joystick and you can even see the two pots on the side. But we want the, and then this is kind of a nice, it's like a vehicle, you know, like this is from a car navigation. Another, so another one that's very popular is this one. This is like, you know, the Xbox style controller joystick. A lot of you'll notice they originally were made and used in console games or our phones or something. And then the part became genericized enough that you can then get it outside of that use case. So like, you know, this is absolutely like a clone of like the Xbox controller joystick, you know, nubbin from the original like Xbox 360. You can get them now and they are two pots and a selector switch and they're very inexpensive. So, yeah, these are larger. They're not surface mount, but they're also good options. So let's look at the active navigation switches. And so, yeah, there's like different directionals. There's ones that are like hall effect. We want a mechanical switch. Yeah, just mechanical. I think it will be under that. And then thumbstick again is usually analog. We enjoy stick is usually something you grab with your hand and you move back and forth. So you want navigation switch. Oh, I'll show you the one access ones. There's some fun ones. Actually, nevermind. Sorry, let's go. Let's stay on target. I'll show you the navigation switch later. Okay, so here's all the options for navigation switches. So again, there's like a mixed match. There's like, you know, this ADA assistive device, but let's search by pricing so you can see all the different cost versions. So unfortunately, there's a lot that don't have photos. So you'll have to check the data sheet, the switch in particular makes a lot of these. These are very slim style ones. So they're not too dissimilar than the NAS which I showed you, but it's like very compact and you would have your own. Yeah, it's hard for a finger to do it. You want to have a mechanical add-on. This one I've seen in a couple of projects. They're fairly inexpensive and they're surface mountable. And then this is the one that, like I said, this is the through-hole version of the navigation switch. So you can see that you can kind of sort of plug this into a breadboard. It's not quite breadboard friendly, but you'd have to solder it in. And then if you go down, you'll see there's again, a kind of a slim surface mount version. And this is the one that I use. So this is, you can see the 360 on second. One second. So you can see this one has mounting nubs on it, which is actually kind of nice because it'll keep it from shearing off. And there's a little like clip-in bits that if you want, you know, again, make it mechanically stable. So when people are pressing up and down, it doesn't shear off of the PCB. But it basically just has six pads. You can pick and place it. It comes on a very thick tape, but you know, as long as the pick and place nozzle can get onto that actuator, you're good to go. And one thing that I thought was kind of neat is this is available in the Eagle CAD, KaiCAD library, sorry, the DigiKey KaiCAD library, which I didn't know that they had. So do check it out. They also have a bunch of tutorials. So if you want Sean to teach you KaiCAD or KiCAD, check out the tutorials. There's also the CAD models, the STP files, and you can sometimes get the, if you're not using KaiCAD, you're using Altium, Eagle, whatever, you can get the footprint from SNAP EDA or Ultra Librarian, which actually I've been using a lot lately. I've been getting footprints for parts. Even if I sometimes redraw the schematic symbol because I like to have the parts grouped in a certain way, I'll reuse the footprint because they did the math of getting the pads in the right location. So check that out. Oh, and another thing is, for a lot of these NAV switches, you'll want to have a cap on top. For the navigation switch that I use, there's a little rubber cap that we actually sell. It actually did appear down here. Let me see, hold on, there you go. This black nub and joystick, which DigiKey stocks on our behalf, fits on top and even has a little joystick symbol. It's not sold by E-Switch, it's actually a third party, but it fits very nicely on top of these five-way NAV switches and kind of gives it a nice rubbery feel. And you can see here what it looks like. It does, the only thing that I didn't realize is it overlapped the reset button. And so on the redesign, I'm moving the reset button because when this was designed, I didn't have that rubber nub in piece, but then I added it later and then realized it was a little in the way. So that's the only thing to watch out for is it does overlap your bike components. However, like I said, I really like this NAV switch. Strongly recommend it. It's really great, it's very compact and takes up a lot less space than five tactile switches and never had anyone say, oh, it was confusing to use or difficult to use. I think they're kind of a joy for adding interface to your project. That's the great search. All right, we're gonna do some questions. You ready? Yes. Okay, here is some questions. First up, could you add maybe the AW9523S for finding that chip? AW9523S. I don't know about the S type. Okay. Sorry, but the 9523 is what? I just used the QFN bird. Do you have predictions for the end of the silicon shortage mid-year, end of year, never? I think by the end of this year, we're gonna be pretty much out of it. But I think, I'm still getting microchip like at SAMD dates of 2024. I don't know if those are realistic or not. Everybody else has kind of wrapped it up, although I'll say that there's a lot of things that went end of line in the meantime. All right, does RP2040 Scorpio have Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, if not, how could you do it or would it be better to not do it? You can add Wi-Fi with a airlift feather wing. And that's fine because the Scorpio output doesn't conflict with any of the feather pins, so you can totally add Wi-Fi that way. Would you ever make a standalone Scorpio that has that built in? I would probably look at just porting the Scorpio code to the ESP32 and having that do it. There's trade-offs though, because the RP2040 is really great at driving neopixels. Okay, any word on last March's F1C100s or even a F1C200s board? I have a trove of documents, info, et cetera, I've gathered over the last year. Oh, send them over to PTA at Adafruit. We're actually looking to doing that board again. It was one of the chips that, even if that chip wasn't unavailable, all the accessory chips that go with it, like the power supply and memory chips were unavailable and so we had to put pause on it. Plus that chip was, I got a couple of samples and then it was tough to get a reel of them, but we'll probably be doing it this year. And in chat it was noted that Texas Interments, TI just did end-of-line notices to a ton of their products. I know, they did and I think they're gonna do it for the power boost chips. I have to redesign the power boost, but they keep saying they're gonna ship us chips. No chips, no problem. That's one way to solve the shortage. Yeah, it's like, hey, it's not out of stock because it doesn't exist. We never said we had these. Yeah, I know. They're just gonna erase it from their website. All right. Oh, was the Scorpio Cowbell mentioned? There's no plans of one right now, but you can just use a Pico and just wire it up as is. All right. That's our show for tonight. Special thanks to all the community, all the Aida for team members, everybody's out there, and Baby, who just loves listening to electronic stuff. Baby Aida is just being super chill. Yeah, she loves listening to mom do electronics. Okay. That's it, everyone. We'll be doing our shows during the week. Thank you so much for supporting a woman owned company here in New York City. Your orders keep us going and more. Thanks so much. We appreciate it. We'll see you everybody next week.