 All right, we are possibly back, we'll see. I'm gonna wait for a second before I launch into things to see people's feedback over in our Discord and on the YouTube chat. So thanks, not sure what happened, but YouTube gave me a big buffering warning and now it looks like it's, is it claiming good stream health? It claims it's excellent, in fact. Wow, YouTube got excited. All right, I'm alive, we're alive, we're here. So thank you so much for stopping by. It's me, JP, and it's time for another episode of JP's product pick of the week. In fact, this is the 78th episode, would you believe it? I keep some of my assets in folders named for the episode. So this is the 78th time we've done this. Thanks so much, show of hands. Everyone who's been here for every single one of them, that would be bonkers, but maybe there's someone who has. So let's see, what are we gonna do? First thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna send you over to this page in case you want to get in on the discount action, head to that QR code or this URL for a deep discount, just like the sign says. And if you head over there, refresh the page, you should see our product pick of the week at a 50% off this week, half off on an excellent product. I'm excited to dive into it, but first what I'll do is have our very own Lady Aida tell us a little bit about it. So take it away, Lady Aida. The Metro M4 Express, choo choo, it's here. Get out of the way, it's a Steam Rollia. It's a Cortex M4, 120 megahertz processor with 512K of flash, 192K of RAM in this nice QFN package. This is a big sister chip that NR51N. It's got some really cool peripherals, it's got a parallel camera capture for camera input, two DACs, it's got analog inputs, it's got lots of digital IO, it's got lots of DMA, it's got I squared C, it's got SPI, it doesn't have I2S, which we, no, sorry, it does. This one does have I2S, yeah, it has I2S and we bought the M clock pinout. So I forgot the other board doesn't. There's a MOSFET on the back. Yeah, this is our tribute board, MOSFET passed away in March. Right as I was finishing this board. So this is his tribute there. He's there, he lives forever in this board. It's got I2S, it's got the I squared C, SPI, UART, CIRCOMS, but the big thing about it is it's just incredibly fast and has a ton of RAM in particular. Yes, RAM, yeah. Boy, that's exciting. We're starting with the Metro M4, which is our Arduino compatible shape. We also have an Arduino core for it that works quite well. So people who are like, look, I just want a very, very fast Arduino, chip that can decode MP3s natively. It can do, again, this parallel camera capture. It's just like heck of fast, tons of flash memory. Maybe you can put an RTOS on there if you want because you've got so much extra room. There's a floating point unit, a proper DSP and floating point. Okay, so we've got M4 with lovely layout, got the kitty. We went with two whole headers for everything here. We have an SWD connector. If you have a J-Link, you can program. It's big. If you have a J-Link, you can program and debug this chip if you want. I mean, it's a Cortex M4. You can, there's a lot of real-time operating systems that you can download and probably compile and get it working for this. Or you could help us on Circuit Python. Or you could use Circuit Python. This is almost the same size as the one that JP made for MakerFare. True. Yeah, I know. Just want to hold it. You've got all those pins. Tons of PWMs. Got the two DACs, the standard Arduino pins. It's 3.3-volt logic. Otherwise, it's pretty much the same layout as the Metro that we've had so far. I tested it with all the shields that we have. And as long as you set the shield to be 3-volt logic, it works perfectly fine. All the shields we've got working. Slight update. No schematic or hardware changes, but we did update the color. I do want to make all the M4 boards purple to differentiate them from the M0 boards. This Metro M4 Express now comes in a lovely purple color, just like before, but now in purple. Nice is right. Did you hear her whisper nice at the end like that? So, let me go ahead and grab mine, and then we're going to talk about it a little more. So let's jump into down cam view here. And I will reveal my copy of the... Wait, that's not it. That's just a Metro card. There we go. Hey, that is it. That's a product pick of the week this week. It is the Metro M4 Express. Let me jump out to this camera now. Metro M4 Express is one of my favorite development boards. And as you can tell, looking at it, it is based on the old tried and true Arduino form factor. So if you grew up on these, Arduino Dua Milanoves or maybe Arduino Uno, you probably have a lot of peripherals, these shields that plug in that you can use and you can still use them with the M4. But what we're talking about here is a really fast chip, lots of memory. So it's based on that Cortex M4, that's AMD 51 chip. And it has a lot of great peripherals on it. Just like Lady Aida mentioned, we have two DACs so you can do stereo out on it. We have eight analog ins. We have a ton of GPIO, PWM all over the place, I squared C, SPI. We have that little SPI pin there that some of the shields plonk right into for direct SPI without any extra wiring. It can be controlled over USB for coding and for your power or you can power it just over that barrel connector there. So that's a center positive between seven and nine volts usually. You can run it off a nine volt battery for a little while or a AA battery pack is great or a DC wall war if you want to. And like I said, one of the great things about it is the shields that you can plug in. I have a couple around here, for example, you might not know, we have a power boost shield. Believe we still sell this and let's you use a lipo and add one of our lovely charging circuits onto that and a little on off switch so you can take a Metro project mobile. And we've also got so much space with this. It's such a large board compared to feathers and others that we use today that one of my favorite things to use it for is projects where we have a little bit of a circuit to build and we need a prototyping area that matches the board. This is the one that was designed by Todd Kurt, Brian Jepsen and myself, actually a re-spin of one that we did that Lamar made. This is the wing shield, the screw shield proto and this plugs in, it gives you the SPI access. On this one, I've added a, this was controlling some light strips and I have some little external wiring for that and some buttons going into the screw terminals. So these types of projects where you have, you don't need to sneak it into a tiny little area. You've got a little bit more going on. We have shields to use, robotics projects with it. I also really love to, let me switch my cameras around here for a second and set this up. Let's make sure this is in focus. Yeah, that'll work pretty well. Jump into that view. This is another example of cases where I really love to reach for the M4. I'm at the start of a project. I'm maybe not even sure what board I'm gonna use ultimately, maybe not even sure what the form factor is, but I just need to work out some of how things are gonna be wired. I'll grab an M4. This is one of the beta ones before we went to the final version in the purple, but otherwise it's the same board. So I'll go with one of these Metro M4s and then in this case, this was when I started working on that PipBoy project. I wanted to plug in the SPI wiring and get this up and running on a board that I can plug things into. So very often we'll have boards with pins on the bottom. We'll, I'll solder them on that way because that's how I ultimately plan to use it, but with the M4 Metro, you've always got these socket headers that are put on at the factory. So it comes that way. Really easy to do stuff like plug an LED right into ground and pin 13 right there, which has a resistor on it, or you can breadboard out something that's a little more complicated, but it's a really good one for just plugging things into. If you have buttons and switches and sensors and things are more complex, things like this display, if you want to get them up and running quickly, I really like to grab this chip. I know it's going to have enough power to do pretty much anything in circuit Python or in Arduino. And then I can work on maybe refining the thing after I've worked out the initial prototype. So really great board for prototyping. And then depending on your needs, it may end up in your final project as well. You can see we've got the mounting holes on there. So these are great for plunking down into a project as well. If you head over to our product page here, you'll see we've got the board on huge discount right now, maximum of 10 per customer. It's $13.75 for a Metro M4. It's a great deal. If you head over to the guide, you'll see we've got the pin out for this. It'll tell you all the different peripherals and connections that we have, powering it, different ways to power it, and so on and on and on and on. There are also a lot of guides that use, let me head to the guides page, Helen, a lot of guides that use Metro M4 or other Metro boards. And very often those will be compatible or close to it. So you can scan through here and see some of the projects. There's a shield for e-ink you can use. In fact, I got one right here. This is a, I'm going to show this before you. This is the tri-color e-ink shield. It plugs right in, also has an SD card on it so you can use that right on the board. And the other page that I showed here, some of the shields, if you just type in shield in Adafruit or other stores, if you look, also look in your closet, you might have some. Here's some different shields that will, in almost all cases, work with the Metro M4 because the pin out is compatible with Uno, which is what a lot of shields are made for. Let's see if we, let me jump back out of there. And back here, I'm just going to jump into the chat for a second. Yeah, Anthony McCris is a really good buy. Not bad, bad Manolite says for 1375. TechEek, I do not know, if someone does know, TechEek asks, does it work with the new Arduino IDE 2.0? I have not tried that. I am going to guess, yes. But if anyone knows in the chat, in fact, let me bring up our Discord and see what people are chatting about in there. Oh, Todd, thanks. Todd Bot posted the wing shield. There's Neo there. Oh, thanks Rich. Rich Sad says, nice touch on the Metro card. I was in New York City just less than a week ago, I think it was. So this has got like a couple of bucks left on it. I always end up with those. If you don't live in New York, you go to New York, you put money on a Metro card, you leave, and now you have a pile of these you forget to bring. Yeah, ATMakers, Bill, hey, nice to see you. He says, yes, the M4 definitely easiest to use circuit Python on, plenty of RAM, speed, none of the oddities. It's a tried and true one. That's why I love it for getting started on a project for sure. And as C Grover points out, M4 is tuned for floating point math. So yeah, for certain sensor applications, really fast. Let's see, anything else? Other questions? Yeah, the little pit boy, that's a cool pit boy gift. And he's scoo-seven always has the best gifts. Where is that e-ink shield now, you ask? Yeah, so this one, that's available in the store. If you look on, bring up our store page real quick. I'll just click on this project that uses it, this weather station. And there's the shield. I think that there, that might be the only e-ink shield. So shield meaning plugs right into that Arduino shaped board or that Uno shaped board. So there's the tricolor e-ink. I don't think we have other ones, but that is, that should get you started there. All right, so I think that's gonna do it. I think that's gonna do it for today. I don't wanna rush because the discount is good just during this show. So one actually, I'll vamp for a second and eat up some time so you can shop for some other stuff if you want to. I was looking around for transportation related shirts and this was the only one I had, but this is the Highway 12 band that our own C Grover in the chat is a member of, he sent me this shirt. So representing the Highway 12 band, thanks for that. I wish I had that full MTA outfit like in the thumbnail image, but I don't. Let's see. I think that's gonna cover it though. I guess actually before I rush past this, some other things to know about the board. We have status LEDs on there, there's still the D13 LED which a lot of us are used to using has a very quick status check like hey, can I blink the LED on pin 13? This has that, also has an onboard NeoPixel which is great. So if you need to do more advanced status stuff you can find NeoPixel on, I think it's pin D40 and just treat it like any NeoPixel or you can just rely on it for letting you know things when you plug the board in if your code has a problem in circuit Python, it'll blink certain color patterns. It's also a transmit and receive TX and RX pin LEDs so you can see if you're successfully sending and receiving serial data or doing things on those pins zero and one. What else? I think that's it. Yeah, let me check my notes. Also actually something I haven't checked on this before let me know anyone in the comments if you have it has a stereo I2S audio in and out which I have not tried on this because there are breakout boards for that that we can use on other microcontrollers. So it has that built right in thanks to that Cortex M4 chip having it built in. And there's also the 10 bit parallel capture for camera and video, another one I haven't used but it is possible to do direct capture on this. I think this is something that Jepler may have worked on in the past. So always more to explore with the Metro M4 and so I recommend you go to the store go pick one up or 10 you can head right to this or this it'll take you to this, that, not that. That right there. And you can pick up your own Metro M4. All right, well thanks everyone for stopping by today. I think that's gonna do it for another JP's product pick of the week. The product pick this week is the Metro M4 Express. Everybody's favorite microcontroller development board. Everybody's, it's day. Thanks everyone and I will see you next time. Bye bye. Choo choo.