 The Great Search, we're out here by Digikey and eight of your things Digikey every single week They did is our power of engineering to find the things you need on digikey.com Which is really handy now during this global parts Shortage, so we need to what are you searching for this week? Okay, how did you get well, you know, this is actually a Watcher request somebody posted and said hey You know, I'm working with the samd 21 and 51 processors is arm Cortex processors And I want to burn the bootloader and I'm having some trouble using a you know, low-cost simsistap board And normally I would get a J-Link mini Which is I'll show the J-Link mini they said it's no longer available It's one of those chips. It's one of those products It's been strongly affected by the chip shortage because I think it uses either a free scale or STM chip Those chips aren't available and so the companies I consider paying, you know, five times the cost for the chips They've just temporarily discontinued the J-Link mini so they can focus on their other products So they said hey, what can I use instead? And so I gave them recommendation And then I was like, you know what it would make for a really good great search because I can also talk about Programmers and debuggers. So let's go to the computer. I'm gonna tell you a story okay, so We make a lot of boards with ARM Cortex chips, I really like the ARM Cortex series They're really great. And one thing that you'll notice is really common is they have What you know, you see on my screen here this little 2x5 headers SWD header The Raspberry Pi Pico that also came out has a 3-pin header They kind of simplified it because they want to have something low-cost But it's basically the ground power SWD and SWC and There's there's two Bodies of thought about how to program Cortex chips. One is you don't want to spend a lot You want to spend about 20-30 bucks? You can get a generic Simpsa stat board. These work with many open-source tools like open OCD I find Simpsa stat programers to be like if they work great they work great But the moment they don't work so great. It's a little bit of a nightmare You know, especially some chips like the nr 51 Really struggled with Simpsa stat programmers because of the way they multiplex the reset line in which case the the real answer is to go to using a J-Link and Did you key stocks all the J-Link? Programmers so, you know, I know they're not inexpensive, but if you are Spending any amount of time programming arm Cortex chips and really really really really really strongly recommend it especially if you're doing contract work Bill it it expense it. It's it's the intact adaptable. It's a it's working tool The J-Link base is is my go-to It supports, you know, there's it's for more upgradable It supports like pretty much every arm Cortex chip and then known universe And it has debugging and programming and it just manages all the weirdnesses like every chip is a little bit weird Like, you know, the Pico has two cores. For example The J-Link can can handle all of that There's also, you know, more expensive ones that do more they do emulation and stuff If you are a student, there's the edu Version which is less expensive. Although again, that's been like temporarily discontinued And what I had a lot of people I pointed a lot of people to Was the J-Link edu mini. So if you were a student Um, normally I'd be like this is my pick because it was like 20 25 dollars comes with a cable You know, it's very bare bones, but it it works like a dream. I love the J-Link mini again I don't use it because I'm not doing educational. I'm running a company Um, but for for students and beginners, it's you can't beat the price But like I said, it is affected by the chip shortage Sadly, so right now there's you can't even do a back order. Nobody knows when it's going to come back I hope I hope one day soon um But in the meantime, if you have something like the metro m4 like the samd series Again, you can use open ocd, but I I have found that it is very challenging and especially if you want to use um Atmel studio with debugging support So if you want to step debugging in a way that's really nice where you know, you could see um, and you know the visual studio like You know version of atmel studio where your code is and you can set break points and it's again graphical I know you can always use gdb, but uh, let's say you Um, you've been using gdb for more than half your life and you want a little bit of a break Um atmel studio is great recommended for samd chips and I will say, um You know as of this last I checked atmel studio does not support generic open ocd simsysdap uh Programmers or in any way that I found easy to do it only supports two things jlinks Which again, you have to either spend a significant amount because you or you have an edu mini Or they support the atmel ic e which i'm going to call the atmel ice Um, and the ic is in circuit emulator. It is atmel's tool. It is again only for atmel chips But it's really good. It supports aviars and samd's and it's it's never let me down You know, I mean it's like I've needed to program chips that chips are being freaky and weird They're not programming the fuses are like messed up. It always seems to kind of bring the chip to life Um, you know, yeah, I'd love the usb tini, but really the atmel ice is what I use. Um So, um, you know, yes, you know the jlinks are around I search for jlink, but uh Atmel and what's interesting is I was like, oh, you know, I was going to recommend the atmel ic e And I was a little worried because I was like, oh, I hope it's not too expensive But what's actually kind of cool is there is the atmel ic e basic which which I do kind of Recommends what I've got It's um this kind of large, you know, white cube thing and it even comes with um the cables And this is like about 130 bucks But if you're on a budget you want to save a couple dollars. I can recommend they also, um Oh, yeah, sorry, there's also the uh The ic e like fancy which comes with like a bunch of accessories But the pcba, which is just the the circuit board on the inside Is only like 80 dollars. I mean, it's it's cool because it's like really bare bones Um, and it's got the uh headers. It doesn't have a case. It doesn't have a cable um the micro usb cable or the sam the um swd cable, but it's a lot cheaper. It's eight dollars. I think is is, you know, it's like a fourth fifth the price of the um Jlink and again, if you're if you're pretty much using atmel chips aviars atmals I like there's also firmware upgradeable. It will always support every single aviar atmel chip like ever created on this planet And then uh, don't forget you will want the cable that goes from that to um this little two by five header uh Did you case tons of these in stock as well? So this is the uh two by five 1.27 millimeter Uh socket header cable and then, you know, we have a guide on how you can use it with atmel studio Um, you know, here you can see it is detected atmel studio um, you can select Any chip again back down to the 1890s um to the x megas Uh, you know in this case I have swd and you can um Uh, hold on I can I have to you know, I selected it it can uh Read the memory you can write the flash you can mess with fuses Um, and of course you can do step debugging. So I you know, it's um other than the jlink This is my go-to tool, especially since the jlink Um doesn't do aviars and the atmel i c e does so It's my product recommendation slash search Um, hopefully you'll you'll pick one of these up. I do I do find them to be quite handy. Um, and especially if you've struggled with um Simpsast app, I believe me a simpsast app board. They're great for 20 bucks Uh, this will save you many hours of frustration. That's a great church