 And welcome to Desk of Lady Aida. Hey everybody, it's Lady Aida Klok, it's our cool new retro graphics, thanks to Christiane who gave us a little bit of a... Nature's healing, we're starting to be able to think about things besides staying alive. Yeah. So we're... Like some retro graphics. We have some retro graphics. Thank you. So we'll be introducing some more fun surprises, you know, new look of Desk of Lady Aida. I love this look. As we recover. Very CGA. We've got some retro-themed things on the menu today. First off, maybe I could show off this, maybe quickly show off this piebasic thing. Yeah, let's go. So on the, we did a little one minute video thing, I think was it load factorial dot basic, and then run, and then you can see, and then you can see the text. So we're gonna make factorial of, I don't know, 23. Very large number. So this is something that you saw on Hackaday sent over. It's a basic interpreter written pure Python. And one of the neat things about stuff that's written pure Python is that circuit Python tries as much as possible to be a pure subset of C Python. And so I just actually copied the files over and you can run a Python interpreter in it. So you can actually go to the piebasic repo because they have a listing that you can run. So in the repel, like the Python repel, sorry, the basic repel, you can put in your favorite basic scripts. I'm just gonna copy this one at a time. And it's funny is that, you know, circuit Python comes from MicroPython, right? It's a fork of MicroPython and MicroPython was clearly inspired by Arduino. And Arduino was inspired by Pickbasic. So it's kind of like we're gone full circle now where the stuff we're inspired by is now running, emulated on our hardware. Oh, sorry, it's confused because it's like, why did you have two things? It's like, why are you running two scripts at the same time? But yeah, so you can run it. It will output text underneath my head over here. It's neat to see interpret another language. Now, you know, there is a limited amount of RAM. So like some of the bigger projects like Eliza, it wouldn't have been cool if it could run but it actually, it takes up so much RAM that, at least this. You know what I'm trying on ESP32 S2, that actually probably would have been able to run PyBasic and run a big script. So maybe I'll try that next time and think, I'm thinking like, what has the most RAM? And it's like the RP2040 with 256K. But actually the ESP32 S2 has the most because it has two megabytes of PS RAM. It's a little slow, but, you know, it's basic. So who cares? Anyways, it's a fun thing. Go download PyBasic from the repo. Check out the Hackaday link and then just drag and drop the files on. And yeah, it's upset. But drag and drop the files onto your board. In this case, I got a PyPortal, but you can, you know, run on anything and then you can win your favorite basic sketches. Oh no, kinda cool. Very retro. All right, what else you got going on? Instal. The other thing I've got going on is Jepler this week wrote a library for another camera. The other camera. So we started with the OV7670, classic camera. Then we updated to the OV, so the 7670 I think maxed out at 640 by 480 resolution. Then we went to the OV2640. The 2640 I think was a two megapixel, maybe a three megapixel resolution. And I think this is the 5640, which I believe is a five megapixel resolution. It's like 2.6K by 1.4K. It's like 2,000 pixels by 1,400 pixels. Of course, this is a video of a camera, of an overhead of a TFT of a camera. So it doesn't look, it looks kinda washed out, but it actually looks quite good on the display itself. So you can see my hand here. One thing you can see is it does auto contrast, sorry, auto, what is it, brightness. So when I first, it kinda washed out and then it kinda realizes, oh I'm washed out and it reduces the DC bias to the CMOS sensor. And so it's dark and then it gets light. And so it tries to do its best to auto levels the image, which is really nice. So I'm trying out this camera module that I got. Now it's got a 120 degree fisheye lens, which is not bad. I mean, it's a fine lens and it comes with a lens cap. There's even one I got that you can, this little part here can actually twist. This has a little bit of glue on it, which is not unusual. So it's kinda fixed, it's a fixed focus and the focus is kinda like infinite focus. So it's not good with nearby stuff, but it's good for basically anything a foot or farther away. There's an auto focus version that you can, that's sorry, a focusable version where this isn't glued and you can twist the camera lens. I also, I got some other samples. So these are OV24, 2640s. So I really like the higher resolution and a lot of the features of the 5640, especially the auto, the color looks much better, to be honest, than the 2640 or the 7670. They're also got like this, there's kinda different lenses, right? So this is a 2640 with a kind of like a simple lens and it doesn't turn at all. It's also kinda got infinite focus lens. And then the one that I thought was interesting is this camera. So this is a 5640, although I couldn't get it working, but it says 5640 on it, so I believe it's 5640. But what's interesting about this is it's got this kind of like metal body and I didn't understand what this was. And then I realized that when looking at the lens, that when looking at the spec sheet, that this is actually, the 5640 has a ability to do autofocus. And so when I opened up the body, so you can see there's the CMOS sensor, nice big sensor over there, rectangular. And then over here, you can see the dual lens, it's very pretty. And then, let's see if I can remove this. Not so gently, because it's already been destroyed. But you see here that this is the- I'm gonna move that so you can see it on the other hand. Yeah, it's tough to. Oh yeah. There you go. So you can see the lens and around it is a voice coil. So this is a coil of wire. And this can very slightly move the lens above and below the CMOS sensor. So this is actually a micro motor, basically. Like a little miniature motor. It's actually kind of neat because the sensor itself apparently has the ability to control the motor and automatically do the autofocusing. The only thing is, I couldn't get this, well honestly, this one's destroyed. But this camera module, I couldn't quite get it to be recognized or something going on, something powered or like it has some weird requirements. I checked the pin out on my computer. So this is the- Sorry, this is- This is what the normal module pin out looks like. And I'll move this over here. So yeah, okay, so it's kind of legible. Okay, so there's the camera and there's these pin outs. And then at the bottom, you see pins 23 and 24 are no connect. And this is the non autofocus. This is like the camera module that I showed earlier, the 120. And then when you look at the version with the voice coil support, you can first off, you can sort of see there's a little bit of a coil looking thing here in the middle. But they also has, this is a focus range. So it can focus from 10 centimeters plus and it's got those two pins are AF, BDD and AF ground. So that's the autofocus ground and power. So it looks like you just have to power the autofocus system and the camera will kind of take it from there. It controls the motor and maybe even auto. I think it automatically does all the work for you. You just sort of have to tell it to go into that mode, which makes sense. Like for a lot of low cost phones, they'll use a camera like this for the camera phone and you don't necessarily want the camera processor to be doing the autofocus management. You want the camera to kind of do it on its own. How it actually does it, I don't know. I guess it looks for blurry pixels and then just tries to reduce the blurriness. I guess it's got like a DSP. It has a DSP anyways, cause it's got to do JPEG encoding. Maybe that DSP can also do autofocus. I'd like to get that working. So hopefully by next week I'll have autofocus functionality anyways. That's my camera experimentation. Yeah. Yeah. I've never seen anyone actually use these autofocus cameras. So it'll be, we'll be the first. Like people have them, but I've never seen anyone successfully use them. Okay. I'll do some bit of notes and then we'll do the great search. Yeah. Check out our updates on Adabox.com because we hope it'll get to you by Halloween. But you know, just spin the dial on the TV and you'll see there's a global part shortage. There is a shipping crisis. There's no flights. Well, I mean, that's domestic. And then- Well, if we need the flights to come in. Yeah. And then in China, they're operating the factories three days a week. Yeah. And four days closed because of electricity rationing. And not only if you're waiting for parts from China, you're gonna be waiting even longer and you're gonna get half of them. To go ahead and answer the question, even if someone already knows, there are things that are just not made in the US. In fact, it is terrible. We should make transistors and all sorts of stuff here in the US that we don't. And so go try to find a bicycle tire made in the US. Maybe there's a place, maybe not. No, maybe not made in the US. Yeah. And so we're all stuck with this together. And so it's just part of the post pandemic. I mean, it's not over, but we're all just trying to make the pandemic not the lead story. So keep checking atetobox.com. You can also ask anytime. And then just another note, I'll probably talk about this on Ask an Engineer. Our team's 100% vaccinated. We didn't need to threaten them with like taking away healthcare or fines or this or that everyone has great healthcare. So what they did is they had questions. They talked to their doctor and their doctor said, hey, it's a good idea for you to get vaccinated. So we're done, but we have some, you know, last formalization of it. And then in New York, there's a Heroes Act and we've already completed that, which is to make sure our team has all the information about everything they need. So that's just me telling everyone who either, either you work at a company or you're, someone who helps run a company, it is possible to have over 100 plus people all do the thing that keeps each other safe. I think to get trust, you have to give trust and that is how we did it. So you want to do the great search? Yeah, let's get right to it. Okay, so I'm going to add the song back later. But for now it's- It's the great search by- Yeah, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. Yeah, we'll probably do a retro version. Okay. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. Great search brought to you by Digikea native reader every single week. Lady Aida uses her powers of engineering to find stuff on digikea.com. We're going to be talking about the 5-5 timer this week. Lady Aida, what is a 5-5 timer? A 5-5-5, also known as a triple nickel, is a special chip that kind of was invented, I think in like 76 or so. It's a all in one non-microcontroller chip that can be used for timing purposes or oscillator purposes. It can do a delayed time. It can do a repetitive like PWM type cycle. It can change duty cycle of a PWM. It's really good for if you, you don't want to get a microcontroller involved. You just want a frequency generated or a pulse generated. It's great. It's really easy to use. And there's like thousands of example circuits. And we thought with the retro styling and also because we have a video from Colin that came out this week, I was like, oh, I should show people how you can get 5-5-5s. And also 5-5-5s have really improved in capabilities. Like they're not as clunky and power hungry as it used to be. They're actually quite cool and easy to use in wide voltage ranges and very low current draws. And if you're a super fan, you've seen our puppet and our cartoon character and also our plushie, we named the 5-5-5 Timer Hans after the inventor of the 5-5-5 Timer Chip. We don't have any of these more left, but that's some of the things that we've done over the years. I also have a 5-5-5 Timer stool from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories that I bought. And then Hans is one of the puppets in the Circuit Playground Kit series. And then last week, Colin did a 5-5-5 Timer video. So I thought I'd play that and then we'll jump into the search on DigiGate. Sure. Why is the 5-5-5 Timer one of the best known ICs of all time? Well, it's been around a long time and there's a crazy amount of example circuits out there for it. It's also cheap, easy to use and most of all, versatile. The 5-5-5 Timer can be used as a timer, performing a single action after a specific period of time. An oscillator, generating a repeating waveform at a specific frequency. A PWM signal generator, outputting a waveform of varying pulse width for controlling servo motors, LEDs, et cetera. Plus less practical uses, like using two of them together to create a stepped tone generator, a.k.a. tardy punk console. For a modern update to the 5-5-5, consider the TLC 5-5-1. It's pin compatible with the original, has a wider input voltage, and higher accuracy. Okay, so let's kick it off. You wanna find these? Yeah, so 5-5-5 Timers, they've been making them for decades and decades. They're still useful all the time, like we use them in our drawdy-o kits, but we also see them a lot of times in learning to solder, learning to engineer, because they're a great way to make a simple circuit that you don't have to worry about software firmware being the issue. So many things have been replaced with microcontrollers, but then you have to deal with microcontroller programming, and bootloaders and firmware, and computer and toolchain. 5-5-5, it just always works, and they're like rock solid. They're really hard to damage. I've never seen a broken 5-5-5. They always seem to work as long as using them with the ranges that they function at. So going to the computer, this up. Okay, so the NE 5-5-5 is like the original classic, and you can still get it. If you happen to need like one of the originals, let's say we want the dip package. Ooh, they're not in stock, but let's, oh wait, let's see. Dip? Yes, no? No, they're not in stock, because they're obsolete. But it looks like Rochester usually has them, but they're out of stock right now. The original could run up to about 100 kilohertz. It ran from about 4.5 to 16 volts, and drew 10 milliamps. So that's good TTL logic voltages and current. You need a lot of voltages, a lot of current to use electronics. You can run off of five volts, but you really need five volts, you can't run it lower. That said, oscillators have improved quite a bit in the meantime, so if we just look for, we'll just go to clock timing, programmable oscillators, and then these are all the 5-5-5s. Oh, you don't forget, you can get dual 5-5-5s if you ever need two circuits, two 5-5-5 circuits, like Atari punk consoles, I think usually have one for frequency and one for duty cycle or something. So you'd have two oscillators. So it is possible to get two for once. Let's look at only ones that are in stock and available at Digi-Key. Thankfully, you can get 5-5-5s. You can't get a lot of chips, but hey, you can even get them in VGA. This is all I get. You have to build everything out of 5-5-5s. You can build everything out of 5-5-5s. Okay, so let's look at eight dip. Because I think a lot of people, when they're first playing with 5-5-5s on a breadboard, they want to breadboard their circuit. So let's also only look at active ones so I can not get anything that's not available. So here's something, the first thing that's interesting. So the original was 4.5 to 16 volts or 18 volts, but chances are you want to be able to run off of a couple of batteries. And so we can select a range that's, you could run it off of one or three volts up to 15, so that's kind of nice. There's also different frequency ranges. So you can get ones originally that was 100 kilohertz. We can see they go up to megahertz now. And then the supply current is in the microamp range. So you can actually run these off of a battery. Now there are different, there's a lot of different ones. Like the TLC551 that we used in the Drobio has a special 100 milliamp output. So you can actually use it to drive a small speaker or I think maybe it's 10 milliamp outputs. You can drive a transistor to a speaker to check the, do you, there's some kind of interest. Like there's been interesting mods and hacks and tweaks to the 5-5-5 to increase like the output current or decrease the run time current. So do check that I have your special needs, but if you just want a simple 5-5-5 that's in stock, TLC555 will do the job. Looks like these are available. There's 2,000 of them or so. And this one can run from three to 15 volts, draws 360 microamps and up to 2.1 megahertz in through hole. And it's less than a dollar in quantity, it's 40 cents. So that's the thing, these are really cheap too. If you are doing a workshop or you wanna teach people electronics or you wanna mess around and you don't wanna spend a lot of money, a 5-5-5. You can build projects for a year on 5-5-5s and you won't spend more than $10 on it. So check this out. You might also wanna get a parts pack from Adafruit with resistors and a breadboard, put that together with the 5-5-5. And you can be having a really good time. Even a couple of potentiometers. You can make blinking circuits, buzzers. I guess it's available. Well, it's available somewhere. I wrote an article when I was senior editor of popular science like almost 15 years ago now, maybe more. And what I did is I cracked open a digital camera and I had it so the button would press over and over and I put the camera on a kite and I showed how to take photos from a kite because we didn't have drones back then that you could just get easily. And I flew this digital camera up in the air and I took a bunch of photos and I showed how to do it and I had to make it fit all on a page, a printed page of course. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, it's a perfect example. It's like how to replace a signal that goes every 10 seconds it pulses. Yes, could use a mic controller, sure, but a lot of people don't have it. This and big cap and two or three resistors and you're done. It might be on Google like Scholar or wherever they scan in popular science. So I'm gonna look it up. No, no. And then at make when we launched the first issue we did aerial kite photography. Yes. I think that was, was that my article and make? No, that was- What was my article? In the first make one? Yeah. I don't remember. Maybe like about, maybe it was about wave bubble, I don't know. All right, well let's end the great search now so we can do other stuff. Okay, so that is, that is a great search of getting a song later. I did, did, did. Okay. I'm curious about what aerial, aerial is spelled with an A-E. Yeah. All right, wanna do a couple of questions and then we're all gonna bounce. Yeah. But I'm curious, I did write an article for make. I just don't remember what it was. Yeah. I have a copy somewhere in here. Okay. Yeah. Question for later, now it's later. How do you arrange, I'm sorry, how do you manage the nightmare of breadboard jumpers? Do what do you use, hot cables? Yeah, I mean like I quickly, you know actually using, you know those premium jumpers are really nice but you really do want to go quickly to custom cut little jumpers and you can lay them flat against the breadboard. Okay, here it was. I did write an article on aerial cut photography. Yeah, this is my 555 timer. You wanna go to my computer? Yeah. I knew I did this. I didn't publish this on make but this was, this is still on ladyin.net. So this was. That's interesting that, you know what? I didn't know you. I don't think you wrote it. I think you read my article. No, I didn't. I used to hack disposable cameras a lot. We, I think, that's funny because I don't think we had met in, no, we didn't meet. So what's funny is it looks like you did a 555 timer for a digital camera thing on Instructables. Yeah. No, it wasn't Destructables. It's on the site. Oh, I was gonna say because Instructables wasn't around. Yeah. That's cool. I'm gonna check the dates. I'm gonna check the dates later. I think we both independently. I think everyone did the same thing. Yeah, we were all like, I got, because digital cameras finally became like, okay, who cares if it crashes into the water? Everyone was doing the same. It wasn't like $400. It was $400. They were getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. I used a, I think it was an Olympus digital camera and it had, it wasn't an SD card and it wasn't an MMC card. It was another time. It was like Charles Benton. Yeah. Hey, look, that's me. That's you. I wrote about that. You wrote about this. Yeah. So how long ago was that? Go scroll up. Oh, I'll tell you remember, I remember it was, this had a mechanical thing and I was like, oh my God, that's nuts. Yeah, it did. And that's why I was like. And it was a disposable digital camera. Can you scroll up and see what date it is on that? 2007. 2007, okay, yeah. That's when, that's when we were doing, this one was going to make. Okay. Yeah. And I remember I read it and I was like, wow, that's like so messed up that you would use, that you would use a mechanical system. And I was like, oh, we should just do an electrical system. And I'd been taken apart disposable cameras. So I knew that it was really easy to activate them because I made an art project where I like set off a bunch of disposable cameras. Disposable digital cameras, by the way, were like the coolest fucking thing. Like they were so cool. Yeah. What was the thing that Cisco bought and he didn't do anything with it? It was the digital cameras that we all hacked. It was the, it was a digital camera and then Cisco bought it for like a ton of money and nothing came out of it. It was like something cam. Anyways, I don't know. Yeah. Sony who? Looks like everyone had the same ideas. Like you put it by themselves. Let's do a question. Yeah, one more question. Do you think US produced chips could be cost effective enough to compete with versions of China that are suffering from shortages in shipping issues? Well, the cost of making a chip is not labor. There's almost no humans actually involved in making chips. It's completely automated. So it's mostly about whether, you know, the government is more on the subset. Also, chips are not made in China, they're made in Taiwan. I don't know that there's that many fabs in China. Maybe there's like one or two. Yeah, it all depends. But right now, all chips are being made in Taiwan. We do have a fab, I think, in Texas or Arizona. Yeah, I mean like, you know, my opinion about this is I think we all need to become a global others focus society that cares about one another and figure out ways to interact together in better ways than we are. Because obviously we rely on all parts of the world to live the type of life we want to live. So we have to figure this out and we didn't do a good job during the pandemic. Maybe this will be a good reason to think about how we can do things better together. Because I think we're way behind schedule on the United Federation of Planets thing. If there's other planets out there and they're making cool stuff, we don't even have it together to interact with them yet. We don't. We gotta get on that, okay. I think that is everything we got tonight. Okay, so I showed a 555, I did have a 555 circuit to show with the- Yeah, it's fine, I'll look later to see. Yeah, it was flip, it was a flip camera. And Cisco bought them and then like, where did it go? Who knows, GoPro came out, all these things. So, anyways, okay. That is- That's it. Dusk of Lady Aided tonight. We'll see everybody next week. No, it's cool. It's time, er, 555, that time.