 The great search brought to you by Digikey and Adafrit. Thank you so much Digikey This is when lady user powers of engineering Every single week to help you find the things that you're looking for because it is a part drought and Lady Aida is an oasis of information that'll quince your search See what I did there. Quince your search Sounds like thirst Okay, what is really going to mark me? I I might one day. Yeah, we can all dream. What is the great search this week? Okay? This week. Wait, it's another customer request somebody asked us About it was equal to a quest that started a thought process to somebody asked us like oh, can you make a little adapter that would take? Like triple-a or double-a battery pack and convert it to usb-c and So you could like plug it in to something that wants usb-c because we have a lot of stuff that uses usb and On one hand, it's like, you know, it's kind of like the easiest problem and also the hardest problem because being a battery voltage alkaline battery voltage can range quite a bit and Especially if you have like four batteries, it can go above five volts or below and so, you know the right thing to use is a buck boost converter and and So it's thinking about like, okay, you know, like we already stuck a buck boost and they could probably use that But it's not cheap. You know, they're they're like, you know, 15 to 20 dollars to have a good buck buck boost converter and also You know, they're more delicate. You know, just like you you can break it You know, they have some limitations and not you know, they're good chips and everything like don't get me wrong But I thinking like I would be you know, what would be an easier way of accomplishing that And maybe do it in a little more inexpensive way and then I remembered that we did an ion NPI on e fuses and e fuses are An interesting chip that kind of takes care of your power supply issues It's you know, people are used to PTC fuses or just water fuses where you know, if the current goes over it'll pop Same with PTC fuses. It'll it'll open the circuit so you don't get too much current But what if You know, you want Something that's a little bit more You know, you only spend a little bit more but you wanted to do a little bit more than just over current like under voltage over voltage You may be like light up something or warn you or latch when there's a failure And so if you just do that, so let's go to the computer and I'll show off. We did cover if you use it So this is you know, I Reference this ion NPI You know about a half a year ago and The you know, I I wanted to if you are more interested in more Details and what's funny is this is a part. I was like as I was like doing the search for e-fuses I was like this part was sound so familiar and it's like, oh, yeah, I didn't I'll be on it But I'll show you that a different e-fuse as well So this this series is quite good There's there's like seriously nothing wrong with it, but From what I could tell I think these fuses were only now they did have a five-hole one then this six three five one But there were a couple things that I noticed About these so let's look at the next six three five one to maybe Make another option. Okay, so one I think I remember now what it was So this was a three amp fuse, which is which is totally fine But I also I wanted to see if I could find one that had a higher range and I think also Let's look at the data sheet Yeah, this had you know, it's not super high, but it does have an 85 mil ome RDS on so it's not it's not low Um That said this was a you know, this was a very good option So I did look for this, but I was also like, well, I want to see what what other parts are available Although this was this is a pretty good one. So Right So let's go back here. So what I did is you know, I just basically because I was like I already know a part that's similar Let's look at active E-fuses and see what else is going on. So I did want this to Range from again about like four volts to six volts in and it would kind of give me a fuse at about five volts output And five volts outputs are really common Voltage, but let's try selecting on the input to start and You know, I think you can go up to like four point five volts Input, you know something like that. That would be four doubly batteries because if it's four Alkalines you'll get like seven ish volts and if it's For nickel metal hydrides, you'll get about four point eight So so that's good. So let's search for that And we got a lot of options and another thing I wanted to do There's there's a lot of options that there's a lot of makers of e fuses So I would recommend Looking for all them Most of them have pretty high currents The only issue I had is a lot of them and ones that I've used before like I've used some of it the TPS They're out of stock and they're like heckin out of stock like you can see when this one might come back into Stock, but the lot of them like they won't even tell you or it's like five years from now So I wanted to look for only ones that are in stock right now and the ones that are in stock right now, you know, I sorted by price and The NIST one is is in there. There's also this one from ST But I honestly got a little bit freaked out by the flip chip because it's a one millimeter by one millimeter Component and I'm like, I don't really want to live. I don't want to deal with a component That's that difficult to pick in place So I looked around and actually found that the TC KE Series and actually had a couple of nice Options which made it interesting. Well, first off, there's a five amp current. There's a wide input voltage range This is the data sheet So they have an over clamp voltage So it's like, you know, you could feed it seven volts and it'll clamp it down for you Obviously, you know, you can't do too much or it'll overheat but You know, it will it will It will keep the voltage Active like you'll you'll be able to get voltage out even if it's a little high because like when you first Turn on alkaline, you know, when you first plug in alkalines four of them, you're gonna get like seven ish volts so so just kind of cut it down to six volts for you and It was quite simple and has like a rise time capacitor set has a resistor for the limit and The only thing that wasn't as nice as the NIST one is that it's You needed to add a external External FET for reverse current blocking You know, these are pretty inexpensive. So it's you know, you can get a FET for like five cents So I thought it was still well within reason But I kind of like this and yeah, there's there's a Historicis on the UV low So, you know, basically for four point one volts, it'll turn back on and it'll turn off a little bit less than that Like three point eight. So this could be a good option for like, you know A buck boost is the right thing to do when you want to get You know, perfect five volts out to your device, but you know, if you're powering You get a cutie pie board or something and you're like, look, you know, I want I just need something about four to four to six volts in and I'm okay with it being a little bit Wiggly in exchange for the price because you know, the cost of these is E-fuses is going to be, you know, 60 70 cents, which is a lot, you know There's no inductor compared to a buck boost or two inductors There's no complexity. No big capacitors, you know, it's it's really just a it's a safe pass through So it's gonna be an interesting option You know, you have a battery port on one side and then USB connector on the other and then, you know, it basically just gives you like a rough voltage out And I think as long as people are aware of that, I think it could still be an interesting breakout board So this is the chip I've selected for the project the TCKE series the 805 that's a five-volt output E-fuse and that's great search