 And welcome to this lady Ada. Hey everybody and welcome my desk. It's seven o'clock That's hacker o'clock today because it's a heckin hot out. So we're indoors doing electronics Staying warm by the sodding iron, which does not give us a sunburn But we do have a bunch of stuff that we worked on this weekend staying cool indoors Mr. Lady. You also have some news and updates. So if you watched The show and tell or any of our social media channels are really anything you would have noticed that We are working with Adam Savage and friends to help get the word out about silicon It's a comic-con and there is also the savage maker verse I put the disclaimer everywhere always because that is how you need to be and should be we make no money on this We have no agreements with them. We just miss maker fare in the Bay Area and we want to help get the word out So if you're in the San Diego area coming up in just a couple weeks It's a savage maker verse workshops and more we had Adam on the show and tell of course and we'll be there We had Jen shactor who will be doing a ton of things there and we had Sophie Who's gonna be doing a really cool workshop where you make your own cyberpunk helmets and more? Jay will be there. Also, you know some makers that you may have heard or seen in the world. We'll be at the comic-con too George Sakai Christopher Lloyd this is like everything you will be. Yeah, it's 101 Dr. Garche. So this is everything you want to do We'll also be there in costume. Yeah, and so Philby and some of your free folks will be around But anyways, I'm gonna put a link in the chat. There's a discount code. Adafruit is a discount code It's 15% off and again we make zero money zero commission We are just doing this because we want to see makers get together It's been a long time if we could fly out there we would but since we can't we're gonna help get the word out So okay, what is on your desk this week? Okay? Well this week we can actually worked on two things One is I'm playing with the new ESP 32 builds for circuit Python ESP that sorry circuit Python 8 is adding support like active support support and support, you know For the ESP 32 the original ESP 32 chip not the S2 or the S3 which we do support and the C3 as well But the original one the one that doesn't have USB native Which is why we kind of never supported it is it doesn't have mass storage capabilities. It can't show up as a disk drive But Scott has been toiling away before he goes on a big break for Adding Wi-Fi or web workflow. I don't know which one he calls it But it's basically it's Wi-Fi based but it's basically a web based workflow or internet based workflow Which means that you know, we want to make it as easy to manage files as it was with mass storage Like dragging and dropping files except you might use a web browser instead of your Computers interface, but there also might be ways of making the file system appear as a network file system And of course we can also do the WAPL via web sockets So really interesting So I'm testing that out with this. Oh, George. Go. So let me let's go to the overhead let me Let me get out of this rebel Yeah, so okay Actually, I'm gonna turn this off and turn this back on so this is an oh George go. This is a ESP 32 based like kind of Game game or console thing. It's actually sadly discontinued, but it's really cool It's made by a company to make single board Linux computers, but it has you know, the joy pads and buttons Speaker a really chunky battery 320 by 240 ili display, which means that we have drivers on off switch Some GPIO header up here. So it's kind of handy if you want to connect stuff and then on the back You can see there's an SD card also handy The speaker connector and then it's got a ESP 32 were over. This is the version. I think that has 16 megabytes of flash and 2 megabytes of ps ram Or maybe 16 megabytes of ps ram. I don't remember but basically it's got like everything Everything gets chunky because it's meant to you can do on it. You can load emulators on it There's also a really great platform for testing out circuit Python So, you know if you want to check out Scott he's been doing some I think some posts or some Deep dives about the web workflow and he'll be doing I think he did one on Friday. I'm gonna be next Friday I don't know time But now there is at the top a status bar and if you can see there's a little circuit Python Blanca, but now it also has the IP address the current status and the name of the the version name which is You know eight zero zero alpha one because I'm running a custom build of this But you see the rebel as appearing normally, but the new Wi-Fi stuff that IP address is new Basically, you know, you load Sort of like a secret step high a dot end file that tells it the SSID and password and when it boots up You know we can Turn it off and back on again so you can see it It takes a few seconds But it says Wi-Fi off and then you know tick tick tick it connects to Wi-Fi and it gets an IP address And now it's available on the internet so once you program it with the SSID then you can go to your computer and you can Connect to it over the web. So let's go back to my computer So there was that IP address the ten dot zero dot one dot one thirteen So if I go there, this is actually this is a web page and it's like why is it so like 1985? 1992 style it's hosted directly on the odoid go. So this is like They're not a graphics and not a lot of stuff going on because it's like this is the bare minimum But it basically gives you information links the board type And how you can get to say the serial terminal. So the serial terminal is as you expect Wappel that Luns over Shrink this up here Maybe I'll make the text a little bigger This is the Wappel that also appears on the tft screen. So if I type in print Hello world You know what I'm typing here is echoed also on the screen. Did you mind going into the overhead again? We'll just bounce a lot to bounce back in a couple of times. So, you know if I type in, you know One-plus-one you'll see as I'm typing it appears in when I hit return. So it's it's echoed and also there is a There's also if you go back to my computer I'm just gonna do a lot of bouncing. There's also if I connect to the Serial port because that you know the esp32 has a serial port even if it doesn't have a you know used be Mass storage device. It does have a USB serial converter all this stuff echoes, you know each each way So like I type in here into The you are it shows up in the web web all it shows up on the screen like it's all cohesive Which is great, which means you multiple ways that you can connect to your ESP32 devices and then if you want to use, you know, you want to get files on it again What we like about the mass storage is like drag-and-drop files shows up as a disk drive That's not possible yet. We're looking at ways of having a network drive But there is a file browser So the file browser is also as you expect. It's It's a hosted web page. It's very simple, but it does show that all the Folders and the files and I can even click on the file and it'll show me that it'll show me the text now It doesn't have an editor yet the editor We will have an editor that will be web hosted, but it won't be hosted from within the device It'll be something that connects the device over like a web socket But you can do simple stuff like make new folders Upload files. So let's let's say I want to upload a new file and I've been I was uploading Some turtle demos. So let's We did star and swirl and Sierpinski, let's do a Benzine, let's do dots. I don't know what dots is So I can upload so you can see it doesn't appear here yet and then when I click upload There's now a new file called turtle dot dots and it has Looks like it just Does a couple dots? Um And then any files that are created also would be available here. So if I was doing some sort of data logging thing That would appear here Dailies, okay. I can also upload a library file. So I uploaded a library file turtle.mpy, which means that I can You know use this to Run demos. So for example, let's say I want to run this Benzine demo I can go to the repel and Hold on I Can import and then I'll paste turtle dot benzine Oops, I think I had a tab in there. It's like you want a tab. I don't want to tab Okay, so then if you go to so, you know, unfortunately the tap said but I did do the import you go to the overhead You know and you'll see it's running You did it the turtle dot benzine demo and then if I want I can you know I can connect to like you can't control C from the web repel yet, but I can do like import turtle dot Couch curve and then Although that I think actually doesn't work. Let's see import Let's do turtle Dot Hilbert Hilbert and it will it'll do the demo so You know basic stuff is working like there is still like more to do The only bug I found so far is you know, if you're in a wild true pass type of thing You can't control C from the web repel You can only control C from the serial repel the you are repel probably because you are repel has dislike It's it's listened to a little bit more. Whereas the web stuff is a little bit like you have to like, you know get into the core and maybe the course and getting maybe the the You know, sorry the free our toss thread that's handling The web connection for the repel that isn't getting Is getting starved. It's not getting checked off enough But otherwise it seemed to work pretty good. And so this is kind of fun like this is you know, I have this kept it to You know serial, but it works just fine Also, you know, if you if you just connect it, you know now the repels closed and I can See if I connected to the repel I can do import turtle star You know, and I'm now drawing a star instead. So, you know, totally totally wireless. Yeah. Whoo. Amazing. This is cool Yeah, it's I mean, it's just like we very cutting edge You know, I just I just submitted a small PR change just to make the display appear as a native display But it does work and you know, what's really nice is because we have added ESP 32 s2 and s3 You know really well done a really good job with that and through the ESP IDF. I think we're using 4-4 as the version You know the ESP 32 it not that it's easy There was quite a bit of work to get the ESP 32 up and running But it wasn't what I'm starting from the beginning with the peripherals like a lot of peripherals like just worked like we have to you know tweak them but Getting SPI and I squared C going was was not as challenging because we already had support for this course So it's kind of a little bit of a step back because the ESP 32 is much older But you know, we want to we want to wait until we had a really good way of interfacing with it. So Next step. So we're gonna add more boards We do the alpha release the beta release or whatever To coincide, you know with or right before circuit Python day, which is coming up And then you know if you have any ESP 32 You know, we have definitions for the feather, but if you have other boards you want to add definitions for We're welcoming them. Please do add them and you know, I think we have both psram and non psram versions Up and running that were room and were over and Pico, which are kind of like pre They're kind of like definitions that kind of it establish How they queue spy flash and psram is connected. So especially if you're using stuff that has those modules you can like Pretty much copy and paste our existing board definitions because the amount of flash and psram and the configuration for the IDF to get those up and running is Good to go. Okay. Any question about that? Otherwise, people are trying out and they like it. They are saying they've been playing along Yeah, it's interesting. I mean like there's just thousands of thousands of ESP 32 boards, right? Yeah, web workflow could be a cool Way to control this plan environment controller And Paul's working on as well. Yeah, and you know, you get to get a chance to talk to everyone live As we build all this and do this through some deep dives If circuit Python day coming up soon, so all right, do you want to do the great search next? Well, I thought I would actually you know, we're gonna do do great search. You know time. I said it's complicated We're gonna go backwards in time. Okay for the great search, but I'm gonna show off this breakout that I worked on this weekend Okay first so this is A max 17 048 breakout. It's a battery monitor. So I've got a battery here And it's a sense resistor less one, which is kind of nice So you can just like plug in a battery and there's and plug in the load and there's no Whoa, what's that? I got a new phone And it's a beeping so this is a battery sorry resistor senseless single lipo battery monitor And I'm writing the driver for it and I'm using my f2 2 3 2 h which I love to write the driver in CPython So if we go to the computer real fast We've got this new driver which I just finished. So if you are using this chip I think spark fun uses it a couple board thinks seed also uses it It's um, you know a low-cost Easy to use monitor That kind of got everything going here and you can see it's it can give you the percentage state and the voltage You know handy one thing that's nice about it is it's extremely low power So if you want to do alerts based on battery voltage or state of charge I think this uses like five micro amperes Very little or even less. So it's great for if you're making Something it's battery monitored and you want to like You know, let's say you have like a feather or board that you want to You know wakes up once in a while takes a measurement or maybe it's waiting for an event like a button press And it wakes up and it takes a measurement and sends data But you want it to also alert you when your battery gets low The problem is you know the battery will slowly drain you have to wake up all the time to see like hey How's the battery doing? What's nice is that this will do it for you in the background and it can send you an alert wake up your board and say Hey, the battery dropped below You know four point, you know, sorry if three point seven volts time to recharge it You can send alert to the user to tell it. Hey, you know the battery level is getting low and then you know if I plug it into The Charger circuit I've got you'll see it's you know the battery voltage jumped up a little bit to four point Oh five and There's also alerts. I think the alert I have is Let's see, hold on let me open up my advanced demo I Set the Voltage at four point one. So let me set it four point zero So you can see Yeah, so this is like, you know, it can send you an alert that the voltage is high And of course the pin is going high as well. And then if you go move it The alert turns off and then if you also Let's see if I have the minimum alert They can set it to you know alert me when the voltage is too low as well kind of nice chip But how did I pick this chip and why am I making a break out for the chip when I have the LC? 709 my favorite Battery monitor. Well, that's that's a topic for the great search. Okay. Let's kick it kick it The great search brought you by did you key and a different things did you key? This is when lady uses her power of engineering to help you. Yes, you Find what you were looking for on digikey.com lady. What is this week's great search? You'll never believe it, but this one is a part that's been discontinued Available and so we have first time in history. Yeah, I will have for this week so far last Sunday So this week we are kind of coming along trying to find a good replacement for a part That's about to be completely unavailable the LC 709 203 our go-to battery monitor chip, so let's Visit Ate a fruit and we'll show this any chance that battery monitor will make it on a feathery vision We don't know maybe now. Let's explore together Okay, so this is what we've got now the LC 709 So this this monitor is it's not a stock number. It's actually not because it's not a stock We just sold a bunch this Battery monitor is quite nice because it doesn't use a sensor sister. It's like about a dollar fifty For the chips, which means I can make a whole break out with everything and tested for about seven dollars the original version had a TDF N part you can kind of barely see it here Which was really nice because it was easy to solder You know eventually that became Unavailable and now we have to use the BGA part but the BGA parts aren't too bad It's a nine pin BGA, but the center pad Can you know connects to one of the middle pads so like it's fine? You know, it's basically you're not dealing with okay. How do I get? You know my pads out from underneath BGA The problem is is at this part. I mean, it's it's discontinued. It's still available But it's going to eventually be not available that said it was still because it's just so inexpensive and great It's still been worth it to use. So for example, this is what I originally used It's no longer manufactured no longer available. And so I was like, well, I'm just gonna swap over to the BGA version Also unavailable but there is, you know 18,000 in stock 19,000 in stock and and there's plenty and we don't we've been able to order enough to last us many years So we're actually, you know good for a while, but long term or something happens to the inventory we have or whatever we will have to Design out or if I'm designing new boards, I'm probably gonna design out to get something else because Stuff that's gonna end of line is is end of line year than it used to be so I wanted to Show how I sourced a Alternative so the price is, you know about a dollar sixty. So that's kind of what I'm dealing with For, you know competition for this part. I want something that ideally isn't BGA And if it is not having to use the middle pads because I really want to stick to some low-cost two-layer boards I don't want to have to go to four look four layer or like buried vias or plug veers or whatever lithium-ion lithium-polymer battery Single cell is fine and I want it to be x squared C So looking at the options here. I want the battery monitor with one cell of lithium-ion Well, let me be able to pick that I want to be surface mount and See what they've got. So let's only go for active parts because I don't want to deal with non active Next step, we've got a couple options, you know, basically lithium-ion lithium Cobalt oxide, you know, Lyco lithium-ion polymer Maybe multi chemistry. I think whatever. It's fine. I think you know lithium-ion is covers everything But still next for the interface. So I actually to look up. What is HDQ? And SDQ so turns out those are basically one wire. So I don't want those so I want I squared C and HDQ I scored C I don't want one wire that I looked at the ones that are dash and those are actually Like battery protection monitors if they don't have any interface at all They just like turn on and off the connectivity to protect the cell I want something that's up. It's really a model like Not like a monitor to like care for but a monitor so I can like query it Okay, so It pairs it down a lot so you can see like this actually the LC 709204 is clearly the next generation But again, I don't like the BGAs and I don't like the BGAs with the pads in the middle I got to do stuff with because I don't want to have to route around I don't want to have to get like a 4-4 world war and I don't want to do a four-layer board lazy Let me let me be lazy Okay, so given that There's actually quite a few options So first up I'm gonna do, you know the pricing is really important to me Like there's just no way I'm gonna make a board with a three dollar chip on it It's basically adds like ten bucks worth of cost. It has to be like around it has to be less than two dollars So let's see what is available. I also want stuff. That's only normally stocking I don't want if it's not something it's okay if it's not in stock right now But if it's something they usually they don't stock at all. I don't want to you know I don't want a special order something. I'm never gonna get So actually there's a couple of options including of course that LC 709 So this is by price so you can see, you know, this one's actually quite interesting. So this is the F F FG 30105 so this was interesting. It's actually You know, I mentioned I don't want a better protection cell I want something to tell me like the state of charge. This is actually kind of both It has a unique identifier. It has I scored C on it, but it's also meant to Possibly control and signal the protection. I see it doesn't have a sense resistor But one thing that is a little annoying about not that I have a I don't have a big problem with this chip But a little bit of a thing is it only really is an ADC like it doesn't really It doesn't have an alert output. I Sorry has a chip enable so it only it's like there's one output, but that just is like Something terrible went wrong. Like you can't really like customize it very much and if you go down to You know the register maps You can do pack you can read the pack temperature and the voltage temperature It says sell current but that actually doesn't work and like there's just user ID like a batter ID So it's it's not really It's basically an ice-cold C ADC. That's extremely low power. It doesn't have any like monitoring or alerts or state of charge calculator, so It's not a bad chip. I mean it's 50 cents, but it's actually kind of like not what I'm looking for So that was cool. I kind of skipped over these. I mean I looked at The data sheet for these a lot of these were good But again, it's like I really I didn't want a point four millimeter BGA if I could avoid it Also a lot of these required a sense resistor and again I kind of wanted to avoid that a sense resistor is of course gonna get you the best Like cool and counting you're gonna be able to track the current going in and out but It makes it a little tougher for people to like if you've got a feather and you want to like monitor it online Or if you have an existing system, and you don't want to get in between the battery Like if you don't if you want to tap onto the battery, but I get it in between This is more complicated. That said, you know the BQ series has some good options and One thing to check is Sometimes not in this case, but sometimes if you're lucky The middle pin which in this case is B2 can connect to another pin. So again, it doesn't have to go out But unfortunately in this case It is a it is a ground pin and they're expecting I think to have like a plug to be on you know inside to get to the ground pat that ground plane underneath Which I don't want to do so I'm gonna skip those and then there's a whole family of them The next ones that seemed okay were like this one. It's not stuck right now this TI series, but It wasn't a package that wasn't it's a visa on so at least you can solder to it, you know without money to die Doesn't look too bad. But again, it you know doesn't you acquire a sensor sister. So, you know, not not terrible But something to keep in mind But I would you know look at that because it is inexpensive and then There is another one from Maxim This is a fuel gauge. This one does also need our sense and it has your question our sense against the ground It's a low side sensing which really drives me nuts because I really don't like Having grounds that are different like I don't mind if the power voltage, you know can dip a little bit But I really dislike it when my grounds are moving So unfortunately this one is kind of a nail go So like as I scroll down, there's more of that bq series and that's when I basically bumped into the max 17 048 because this kind of is very similar to the LC 709 203 No sense for sister run directly off the battery has an alert has I squared C. It's pretty simple You know, and I got the driver working, you know in a couple hours in Circuit Python and another nice thing about it, which I thought was nice Is that the you know, it runs off of a battery which is expected to be 2.5 to 4.5 volts But the data pins can be up to five So, you know if you're using this with something like an Arduino Uno or some other five volt microcontroller You can send I squared C data five volts Even if the battery is at like 3.3 like it's it's protected. So I I ended up going with this chip, but I didn't want to show one one more option because I saw this weird Chip so I was like well like let's look at this. It was the LTC This LTC wasn't too bad also required a sensor resistor, but there was another one Remember it was Hold on I Have it in my Actually, I don't Let me actually look up analog Devices maximum Let's see if I can find it Was it this one? No, sorry not analog. It was Linear Sorry this one. Oh, I can't find it. There was one interesting Chip, maybe we'll highlight this that that linear tech came out with and What's neat about it? Is it actually the Sensor resistor wasn't inside the package itself And it could like it did the coolant counting but didn't need an external resistor like it did high-side sensing All on zone. I can't find it now, but if I do later we'll post about it, but The problem is that that even though I liked that there was just or said that it was a high-side sensor resistor on the inside They had a hundred milliamp current output max. So in the end what I ended up going with was the Mac 17 046 benefit also was there's 10,000 stock So, you know, I'm ordering basically a reel of these and I've got the breakout ready to go now But these have been actually in stock for quite a bit like the maximum has done a really good job of keeping them Available for digickey, so I'm feeling pretty confident that this is not going to be discontinued in the next two weeks if I'm picking a Replacement I want to try to pick something that's good for like three years at least summarized nicely in a chat Sounds like this week's great search lesson is that at times finding a suitable replacement takes them diving into the details of Dish eats and recommendation Recommend configuration That's right Especially with battery monitors are all a little different like you saw some are high-side someone low-side some sensors Just there's some don't some are some they have I squared C, but check the register map Does it really give you what you need? But yeah, this one this one's a good one. I'll probably end up also looking at a high-side, you know current sensing one As a backup alternative because these them they the model gauge ones like these where they try to model the state of charge based on voltage and Voltage change are really funky, but they're they're a little unusual. They're weird. All right. Well, screw has a good pun It's a real experience our EL and then immediately I said, oh, we should do a new show the real world Yeah, we put five engineers in the house and we don't give them parts. Let's see what happens They have to they have to fight over the last, you know tube of at mega three. I'm not here to make friends I'm here to do engineering Sounds like random hall. Okay naked and afraid of not getting parts. Okay. That's this week's Great search. Thanks Okay, so all those puns are over. Yeah, anything else before we bounce. No, let's hope I remember the name of that part but I can't I Can't remember it was it. Oh, sorry is the LTC 3 3 7 this was cool Yeah, so let me just show this real fast on the overhead on the computer This is a really weird. I didn't end up going with this chip, but I did see it. It's really funky. So this This is a monitor that has I mean like first off anything from linear is always going to be like kind of like crazy And amazing They make great stuff and this one was actually affordable too. So it's an interesting. It's a cool encounter with Battery state of health, but what's interesting is that it doesn't require any external components instead You have the battery in and then the system load goes through the chip and it does like the monitoring like inside and then Like it you have like a super cat. It's kind of funky and weird. There's like a super cap and There's I scored C connectivity and you can like query it. The only thing that's a little annoying is You can like change the current limiting output the thing that is Annoying is that the current limit max is like a hundred milliamps. It's like You know, you can't get up to like a Wi-Fi chipset, you know draws through hundred milliamps or 350 on connection You just totally You know, blam out it. So not something that we could use but definitely Funky funky and weird part. So I thought like I'd highlight this is it, you know, sometimes It's not the part I want But maybe it's a part somebody else could use if you want to go current peak limiting because that's actually the one thing that most Battery monitors for lipos don't do there's no way to limit the amount of current You'd have a separate circuit to do that This one will do current limiting for you as well as cool and counting state of charge, etc So really funky weird part, but check it out. It's the LTC 3337. All right, and that's the Descalade 8. Thanks everybody