 and welcome to Lady Aida. Hey everybody and welcome to my desk. It's me, Lady Aida, at my desk, doing all sorts of engineering this week. So let's check out some of the cool stuff I've been working on. So let's go to the computer. Okay, so on my computer, let me just like move some stuff around here, make some room, a few, wow, it's been two years, a few years ago. I did a great search on finding an alternative for the seesaw chip that we used historically, the SAM-D09, which we used in like, let's see, we use this in the soil sensor, the stem of soil sensor and also the seesaw, like rotary, sorry, rotary encoder. Oops, not that one, this one. So like this breakout here, if I look at the back, it has a, you can barely see the SAM-D09 on it. And this is the original firmware that Dean, who was at Aida Fruit a couple of years ago wrote, that allowed us to do I squared C to anything conversion. So like I squared C to ADC, I squared C to rotary encoder, like you'd program firmware onto this chip and then it would turn it into an I squared C, like extender and this was basically because you can get I squared C to GPIO, you can get I squared C to analog digital converter, but like there's no such thing as an I squared C to rotary encoder or I squared C to NeoPixel adapter. So originally we used the SAM-D09, but then chip shortage hit and like basically any ARM Cortex chips were nearly impossible to get. And so we did that great search to get, when we found the AT-Tiny 818, I think, or it's 1618 or 808, yeah, 816. And this is actually a really great chip and this was also unavailable. Of course, now you can see there's tons in stock. And so we did a bunch of breakouts with this family. Let's see if it's just the store or the shop. So I made the 816 and 1616 breakouts. So these are both in the 817 as well. Turns out that I actually like the 816, it's much smaller, it's much more available than the 817. It's a tiny chip, but it has analog digital input, it has GPIO, it has interrupts, it has tons of pins. One thing I really like about this chip family is it's three or five volt compatible because it's an AT-Tiny. You can program it with one pin, the UPDI, and it's like a serial port. So it's like very easy to program it. You don't need like a whole shebang, it's like any USB serial adapter will work. And there's a great core for it by Spence Kandee who built the teeny mega core. So this, the 816 has a AK flash, a half a K RAM, and even has an EEPROM, which is also great because we can use that to store like the I2C address or specifications. And I did this breakout, the 816. And then I did the 1616. And these are both, the same pin out. The 1616 has 16K of flash and 2K of RAM. So it's actually kind of close to an Arduino and capability, but again, the chip is only like 80 cents on Digi-Key. So having done those breakouts, I wanted to then revisit and redo a bunch of my original iSquared C Stemma breakouts that were gonna be SAM-D09 and then I had to redesign them for the 816. So the first one that I designed that I wanted to revisit was this ANO Rotary Encoder adapter. So the ANO Rotary Encoder is, which I think I showed, it's a really cool like iPod-esque wheel. It's got up, down, left, right, and a button and this is a scroll wheel. So it's a rotary encoder, it's all mechanical. It's not like a modern iPod, the more recent iPod. This is like the original iPod with the classic rotary scroll wheel. Really fun and tactile, but you need like a ton of GPIOs to use this because you need two GPIOs for the rotary encoder and then you need five GPIOs for the switches. And you also have to constantly be checking them and doing interrupt stuff. So I thought this would be a great candidate for rotary encoder support. So this is the prototype. Let's go to the computer. Sorry, the overhead. So this is the design for the PCB and you see there's the holes for the rotary encoder. This is the AT-Tiny816. There's a slot here for the NeoPixel, but I didn't solder it and I'll show you why. I did for one and then I'll show you why for the others. And then STEMQT. Normally I like to have the STEMQT centered, but because of the weird hole locations for the new ordering encoder, you can't. And then this is the final built version where it has the NeoPixel. So the NeoPixel I thought might shine through, but like it totally doesn't at all. It's extremely opaque. So I'm just gonna remove it because it would have been cool to have. Like it actually does, this demo does have it change color. You can kind of see it changing yellow and then it's like green and then it's blue. But you can't see it from the other side. And then there's also a interrupt over here. I think if I, you can see it flashing when I press the button. What's nice is this is all over I squared C. So what I do is, let's go back to the computer and I'll show the code for this. So the way the code works is that this example here, the ANO encoder, I want this in Arduino. And I have all these like pound defined configs where I set which pins and like which NeoPixel, you know, if there's NeoPixel support and the default I squared C address and the product code. You can read the product code from over I squared C to verify. It's the thing you think it is. And you know how many encoders and what pin it is. And then I programmed this again with this core called teeny mega core. And I have to like select all these things, that, you know, the frequency and the chip and whatever. But thankfully the core that Spencer wrote is like almost completely Arduino compatible. And so I can even do stuff like have serial print debugs, it's over UART, not USB, but it's very handy. And then I have just this, you know, initialization code and then the one loop that just constantly listens for I squared C and then does whatever the command says to do. So after I upload this and you upload it over serial UPDI, which is, you know, this is just a USB serial converter. Then on the separate IDE, and this is a great thing about Windows gonna have multiple IDs open. This is where I, you know, define the code that actually connects to the I squared C device, verifies that I have the right chip. It looks for that again, that version number 5740. That's the product ID. And then sets the switches to input pull-ups and then reads the encoder. So if I go to here and I'll reset it. So you see the output. Okay, found a seesaw, found the right product code, turned on the interrupt. So now when I spin this around, you see the number goes up and then if I spin it the other direction goes down and then if I press the buttons, they print out. And so this is a great, you know, it's over I squared C and I can have multiple devices on one I squared C bus. So if you want to have multiple loader encoders against them, that'd be very hard to do in Arduino without having an assistive like device to do it. So this design, other than the fact that the Neopixel doesn't work, works pretty well. Okay, and then I've got a couple other designs. We can go to the overhead. Okay, so another design that I haven't tested yet but that's next, because this is the one I was working on today, the ANL. This is a I squared C to Neopixel adapter. So a common thing that we have is people who have a Blinkett compatible board, like an orange pie or like an onion omega or like some rock chip Linux, what's your my jigger? And they're like, I want to use Neopixels with it but Neopixels need that like specific pin timing that's like very, very delicate. Like it has to be, you have to have the interrupts off or you have to use DMA and people figure out how to do it on the Raspberry Pi chip set because there's like billions of people with Raspberry Pi's and so it's worth the effort but it's not worth the effort to like add Neopixels to support to every NVIDIA chip set, rock chip, all winner, there's so many of them and not enough users and frankly it's just a lot of work. So instead, as long as you don't need very fast updates, this has an AT tiny 1616 and which has 2K of RAM and so you can like control, you know, 500 pixels or something even though like it's a very slow update because you've updated over I squared C, you can at least set this to like, you know one megahertz update and then you can control pixel so you can do basic lighting effects like you could do basic animations like it's not going to beat having a standalone native Neopixels support, but it's okay, you know and then you give it five volt and power and then, you know, power in and then power in, data out so these two are connected. You can't power the Neopixels over the STEMI QT because these connectors are only really good for like a hundred milliamps. I wouldn't even let people do it. I'd say, hey, you have to power the pixels separately but you at least will be able to control pixels if you just want to get them tested or working or you want to do some basic ambient lighting. Again, not good for like precision division, high speed stuff, but you'd be surprised. You can update quite a few pixels pretty quickly and then this is another design. So this is a joystick DE-15 for a PC joystick like an old style like a Sound Blaster 16 style and it's connected to another AT Tiny 816 and this has two potentiometers in it and then a bunch of buttons but I thought it was kind of cool to make it easy for people to connect to old style PC joysticks and then, you know, you could use like the buttons or like, you know, whatever flight sim controller stuff with modern electronics and you can control this. So I connect this through to any like a QT Pi which is running a native HID program and they could convert it to HID. So this would be your little adapter helper. So those are the three seesaw designs and don't forget the seesaw code, the peripheral code is open source and it's on GitHub. So just go to show you, it's called seesaw peripheral. So this is the code that you run on the... Oh, can you go to the computer? Sorry. This is the code you run on the AT Tiny chip and it reads I squirt C commands and there's a lot of examples for different devices so this might be handy for some people. You're like, you want to do Neopixels or some of the products we have PWM encoders, fast Fourier transforms, et cetera. Okay, so that's the stuff I've been working on and then I thought we would go into the great search. All righty, here we go. Where in the world is that part I need? The great search brought you by Did you get an AT for it every single week? The lady AT is your private engineer and they'll be as you find everything you need to find on digikey.com. Lady AT, what is the great search that's awake? Okay, so this is a, let me find one second. Terry, watching. Okay, so we had a question. Okay, this is a great example. We had example, sorry, let's go to the computer. Sorry. We had someone write in on, I think the comments to this video and they said, hey, I want to get a panel mount button that's like lit up that has latching action where you push it once to turn it on and push it once to turn it off. And you can see here, like the button gets indented, it latches in and we call this like a latching button as compared to a momentary button which is like a tactile switch where you press it and then when you release it, it opens up. And they were like, it's really tough for me to figure out how to find, I just want to find a panel mount on off switch like this with a press button and maybe some sort of light in the background to let me know when it's on or off. Can you help me learn how to search it? And I was like, that's a great idea. So we do take user requests. So let's show how to go to digikey and find a panel mount switch and one that has latching on off control. All right, so we're at digikey. So let's look for, let's just start with panel mount switch. So we don't have to search panel mount first but I figure it's a good, it'll give me a good start to what I'm looking for. So there's key lock switches. These are like ones that have locks and there's toggle switches. You know, toggle switches are, you can use them as on off switches and people do, you know, up is on, off is down like light switches. Locker switches are also always gonna latch, right? Because you have to mechanically move them up or down but this person particularly wanted push button switch. So push button switches are gonna include both momentary and latching and those are the two kinds. Okay, so first up, let's of course only look at active. I mean, there's a lot of products and let's, just because there's so many, let's also only look at in stock and non-marketplace just to, because there's 176,000. So let's pare it down to some reasonable number. Okay, so these are some push buttons. So like you already see like there's some pretty nice options here, square, red, you know, a PCB mount, lots of panel mounts. So for sure there's gonna be something here. So the first thing that they wanted was again, that switch function, they don't want it to be like press and then release, which is called momentary. Like it's only on when you press, they want it to hold whatever they press it. And so that's under switch function and this is very confusing because there's a lot. There's like off momentary and there's off momentary momentary and there's off momentary on and there's off on, off on on momentary, on momentary, off momentary, on off. Like there's all these different types. Basically momentary, when it says momentary, that means whatever is the opposite, like if it's off, momentary means it's normally off and when you press it momentarily, it turns on. So let's just show you that even though it's not what this person wanted, this is kind of what most people think of when they think of over the switch. So these are push buttons and they don't latch. When you press them, the two contacts connect and when you release, they disconnect again. So off momentary. And sometimes it's also called SPSTNL normally open. So single pull, single throws, there's only two contacts, they either touch or they don't and normally open and when you press, they connect. Okay, but that's not what they wanted. So let's turn off that switch function and go back. So what we want is non momentary. We want it to be when you press, it changes. And so we want it to go from off to on. Now you might want to know what's off, on, on. That means that there might be multiple modes or might be like multiple switch connects. This person just wanted on off, not off, on and then a different mode. So also there's like, why is there off, on, off? Well, you know, maybe it's like, it's indented when it's on or it's indented when it's off. But let's assume that either one of them is okay. So these are the two options. On, on would mean that there's two switch contacts, so SPDT, so go between two different throws, which is also maybe what they want. But again, we're going to go with the simplistic, just on, off, off, on. Okay, so now they've gotten rid of the momentary contact stuff. Some of these look familiar like Adafruit stocks, you know, stuff similar to this. This is a nice little gothy switch. It's got an LED illumination ring that's very nice. This one doesn't. This is a latching push switch from JEDCO. I love JEDCO switches, those are really great. Square ones as well. We wanted one that had an illumination, it had LED. So incandescent is used often, like it's like neon for high voltages like 120 volts. You'll see often like power distribution strips, you know, you'll have the switch has like a flickering red-orange light that's like an incandescent or neon 120 volt. We want something that's LED. So we're just going to select LED, not incandescent. But let's say any color is fine. It can always be picky later if you want red, green, or blue. Actuator marking, don't really care about this, but you know, if you want a power switch labeling on it, that's a common request. Let's say we want rounded and let's see a couple of options. And there's the voltage rating. This person didn't write up and say what voltage rating they want. But of course, if you want it to run 120 volt or 220 volt power switch, you would select it. But let's look here. Okay, some nice options. So then let's look by pricing. Just let's see, like let's get, because they were like, oh, I want an inexpensive switch. Ooh, so a couple of nice options here. Just gonna go switch. And then, yeah, these are all going to be a couple of amperes. Let's see, LED red. Looks good. This one is kind of nice. This one, this is, this is kind of cute looking. This one looks good too. Fairly inexpensive. These switches, this one has, you know, the illumination within. I will say like, you know, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna pick one, but to be fair, all these are very good. Like this one might be a really good option if they want a metal button. But I did kind of like the look of these e-switch buttons. They can do three amps at 125 volts. They have a really, they have like a nice black plastic, like, you know, rectangular cover. And then you have a lot of space here to drill a hole for them on the bottom. You can barely see it, but there's a plus or minus for the LEDs. And then, you know, the power switch itself available in red, yellow and green. This is the diagram. And then this is the data sheet. And, you know, e-switch is like super reliable. These are gonna last many, many, many cycles and be able to handle very high current and have good documentation for all of them. And then of course, if you need slightly different specifications, you can check those out. But this was my pick for the great search. I think this is a good option. So there you go, dear fellow email writer. Lots of switches available. Pick this one, but there's also many more available for under 10 bucks. That's a great search. Where even part I need. Oh, Kidoki, that is our show for this week. Thank you so much, everyone, for joining us. We have lots of stuff ahead this week and more, including some surprises. So we'll see y'all online. Thanks, everybody. Bye-bye.