 Okay, the great search brought to you by Digikey. Thanks Digikey. Every single week Lady Aida uses her powers of engineering and smarts to go to the Digikey site and find all the things you need. This is especially helpful for part shortages when you have to do things like substitutions and more. But this week we were on a mission because we're making a bunch of keys and... Well people were asking so I got a request of like so someone on team was like I've seen these really gorgeous keyboard cables. Yeah. Which again I'm not endorsing or not endorsing spending a hundred dollars on a keyboard cable. I was just personally curious what what is up with these and they're like oh they use these cool aviation connectors. I was like well what is what is an aviation connector? And so I did a little bit of research and they often use limo connectors or sometimes like the YC8s or something. There's a couple of variations but limo or I remember limo connectors we used them in the Media Lab for our wearable computer stuff. We would have the twiddler on a limo connector in there and for so if you get caught on something you could easily detach it. And so I thought I would first show off these cables but also look there's people who you know if you're doing projects you need a really really good push-pull connector like nothing really beats a limo. They're amazing. They are not inexpensive but they're very high quality. There's a reason they are often used as you may guess for aviation. I do understand why folks will spend time and effort and energy to make a beautiful keyboard because because you might be using this thing eight to ten hours a day. Like what other thing touches you eight to ten hours a day maybe your phone? Pillows. I have a really nice pillow by the way. Like I got a really nice pillow like kind of somewhere in the middle of the pandemic and it was really helped. Yeah. It's not from the My Pillow Guy before someone gets honest about it. So I can understand why folks like these because it's on your desk. It's probably in your living room or in you know the most intimate place in your home. There's this keyboard. So I understand why people do this. And I think one of the things. Yeah this is a really beautiful one. I was just googling. I was like oh my god this is gorgeous. It's glowing purple. As a community we can like the eight of fruit community is fine but I think one of the things outside of the community is like I think there's a tendency to like make fun of folks and say like oh you're spending on all this money on this. So what like it's this thing that you use all day long like if it if it's something that brings you joy and you built it yourself like that's fine it's cool. Is that cool. Yeah anyways so we wanted to find out more about these. I'm curious about them. So so but you can you can get them pre-made and I will say if if you're not experienced solder or cable maker it's a good idea to do it. This is just more like if you're personally using it for other stuff it's it's a similar connector to this. So if you look online so this is this is one that actually uses a proper limo connector and you'll you'll know them because they have these little red dots and these grooved connector. So you see that the the cable is coiled and then you can you can quit connector you can change out the contact. So these are usually four pin cables because they're using USB. So let's go to digikey and so let's look for you actually just search for limo although I'll show you how to find the whole category. There's actually a lot they're they're often they're actually called circular connectors and you can look so the only thing is that there's like a ton of stuff that limo makes if they make even though they're called limo it's it's it's a little bit like the Kleenex thing that limo is the name of the company that makes them not the name of the connector itself even though the moment so we said a limo you know free watch I was like oh I know exactly what we're talking about because they're really nice it's actually something more like this right like that's what it looks like yeah you can go to limo.com slushie and someone drop that in the chair you can yeah they're called medical connectors which is like there I mean these are like these are like they're so enjoyable to use okay but let's let's look for active and let's look for we don't want we want free hanging and we don't want panel that we want them the ones that panel that would mean that one side is a panel mounted the other side push pulls out which is which is fine but we don't want that we actually want free hanging which means that they're in between two cables so they are literally free hanging which if you think about it is like the kind of the most stressful thing a cable can do right because it can get caught it can get yanked it can get twisted there's now there's two sides that are that are very delicate so that's why these cables these cable connectors are cool someone made custom cables for their brother for their birthday look at that and so that's cool there's a cool I wonder how you coil the cables okay yeah so this is for the the the inline cables next up you know there's still like 14,000 I mean there's tons of these I know that we kind of want these right so let's but let's show how to pair it down to get to them so the next thing is is how many positions we want now there's a lot of options 114 I gotta see what what's 114 connectors what what is this unholy oh my god okay I don't know what what you would need this for but if you did I guess they did you keys got it you can you can use them we're not gonna go 413 we're gonna go for four and we're not gonna do three plus one coax we're gonna do I don't know what quad racks is but let's just do these to make the custom cables you coil it with a post and then heat gun and a lot of patience that makes sense a lot of patience yeah hi I think we should we've got these we've got these nice woven cables I wonder what happened okay so next up let's you know you can get different colors but you can start looking at these these so these are like basically when people talk about email they have different series numbers and the series of numbers is how large the cable opening is so actually let's why don't we make one that'll fit this cable I have here I didn't plan that but you just grab my multi meter my uh it's a toy calipers so I'm gonna measure the diameter of this woven cable that I have maybe this kid maybe this cable is a little limo if I so you measure the diameter and it's you know 3.7 millimeters 0.14 1 4 inches so this is done in yeah it's kind of like an inch and there's always like a little bit of a range so yeah about 0.14 so let's look at the cable openings so you can do this one this one this one there's a couple of let's see one four okay so these are the the 0.14 so maybe we'll do this one for six that's the that's the max yeah and I want it you know you want it to not be you can't you don't want you definitely want something larger because it'll it'll be floppy inside okay so let's apply so now we've got only a hundred three hundred this is easy for light sabers too yeah okay cool okay I don't care too much about the shell finish although if you care you know go for it so fastening types so push pull and detent lock I don't know detent lock but definitely thread it is what you think you thread it on whereas push pull which is what a lot of people like you there's actually a little like sleeve on the spring and you pull it to detach it and then you can snap it back on again very luxurious so let's do push pull didn't really reduce the number any and then next up let's let's just see what's in stock because that's actually gonna cut it down a lot alright so basically we've cut it down and we can look to see like this is yeah these are these are glorious I see if they have a version that has a 3d 3d model but this one shows you all the console when you get these it's a kit okay and this is one side you need two sides don't forget both sides are required I guess there's a request for a stemma yeah perfect we can make stemma qt dilemma to make it waterproof okay yes you could so you can see that there's this is the plastic bushing that holds the four contacts there's a shell this is the spring load part this is the back part this is the you can see that there's a little bit of a like a groove this is what grips the cable so this is what you get for the cable grips so in general there's there's different families so what I did research is there's different family series from zero zero B which is the smallest family literally the thinnest to zero B zero E and up I'll say most people use zero B that's kind of the most common but zero zero B is also available they just they're just literally much thinner like these are very thin they might be a little tougher to put together so it's up to you you go back to the keyboard picture on your browser yeah so this is actually not a limo though I just wanted to show this is where they this is what it looks like where it kind of ends up yeah this is what so this actually this actually a really good image although it's a little bit dark by the way view image was removed from my browser and I'm going to go to like murder some developer for removing view image like I have to install plug-in to use yeah and I really I'm really upset about it depending on the browser I use I have all these plugins to get functionality I used to have back that's weird yeah it's like little little patches yeah so anyways anyway so this is what it looks like so this is what it looks like and you can so this is you know you have you need both sides don't yeah cool it is a really cool looking yeah these are just like this is me they're so cool looking but like I just wanted I know people always get like like oh it's an audio file it it's just because it's cool looking which actually really respect they're not like oh this makes you type faster they're just like it's just really cool looking which is so yeah but also the demo connectors are really great anytime you're doing like if you're doing a project that is that needs quick connects that are really durable and desk proof and I don't think it's a waterproof they do make versions that are but really connectors are the things that take down product I've not seen anything destroy a project faster than bad connectors so good cancer good so the this is kind of the one that most people are using the zero B series FGG chances are if you're if you see somebody making a keyboard with a limo connector they're going to be using this okay how much are they each they're 22 bucks yeah so but here's the other thing and let me just say this but you're making your own keyboard and this is a piece of art and you're gonna have it for years that's pretty cheap considering how long you may have in like you bring it is it is a very it's a very expector and then don't forget you need the other side so sometimes they have the mating connector on the back here and the bottom here they show you the mating side so there's panel mount mate and other so you'll also need one of these just FYI you'll need both they're really amazing though I will say so so they go this is limo connectors great for keyboards but also great for other projects including as medical and aero nautical engineering yeah that's the great search all right