 and we'll just Lady Aida. Hey everybody. Welcome. Oh, I'm doing cool animations back here. Welcome to the desk of Lady Aida. It's me, Lady Aida on this lovely Sunday night. It was really beautiful weather this weekend. So we did a lot of walking. We're like moving our feet, which is good. Makes our brains work a little bit better. But we're at my desk right now. So what kind of electronics have I been up to? So I thought I, you know, I didn't design any new boards this weekend, but I did design a whole bunch of boards this week while I was at work. I thought we could talk about some of those. But first off, is there any news or updates? Anything from, you want to chit chat? No, full speed ahead, full week of shows and more. Let's do it. Okay. So one of the things that, you know, I kind of almost every week that we've done desk of Lady Aida is STEM a Sunday. And this is, this is no different. But one of the things I was working on is actually a board that I'd forgotten about because usually I have all my PCBs. You know, when I order them, the track of which PCBs I've ordered. But in this case, I didn't order a PCB. And that's why I forgot about this design that I had done. So let's go to the, the computer. Okay. So one of the things that's neat about, you know, doing STEM and QT boards is what I'm trying to do is, is, you know, have a standard layout and size for boards. So all of our breakout boards, they're plug and play, but they're also physically about the same size as much as possible. I try to fit them into this size with connectors on the sides. And then, you know, the pins on the bottom and the pins, I try to make them in the same order. So it's power, three volts, ground, clock, data, and then, you know, other control pins. And then I try to have four mounting holes or at least two mounting holes at the top. And one of the neat things about doing this is, first off, you know, people always ask for actually a long time, they've asked, hey, can you make, you know, the boards have the same pinout so it's easier to swap them in and out, because we'd have boards that were very similar but had slightly different pin orderings, because I would just sort of, I would just whatever order at the bottom, I would just kind of decide, you know, on the fly, basically. Try to think of like a, I think the MCP, yeah, like this one happens to be power, ground, clock, data, and this one also has to be power, clock, data, but I, let me see. It's sort of an early board that I designed. I think the SILabs UV. Yeah, so like for this one, for example, the order is not, it's power, you know, ground, then three volt, then into LED, clock, and data, and that's just because it was just way easier to route that way. But, you know, by trying to make all of the boards the same pinout, if you do want to stack, you know, of course you can stack them or you can chain them together. But another side effect is, by going with a standardized layout, is I can actually sometimes share the layout, the PCB itself, between boards. So this is the BME 280, and then if I look at the BME, sorry, that's the BMP 280, and then if I look at the BME 280, you'll see that the layout is identical. The sensor in the middle is a little bit wider, but I actually use the same footprint. But all the other parts are, you know, I can kind of flip between them and you can see the PCB is actually the same. You know, I actually use the same stencil and the same layout for both PCBs, even though the sensor's technically different. And then also the DPS 310, when that came out, this is from on a semiconductor, you know, this one, hold on. This one is also, as you can tell, the exact same pinout and the exact same layout for the components, all I do is change the snook screen to say from BME 280 to DPS 310, because it's the same, you know, this is clearly made by this company to be pin, you know, compatible. And especially now that there's a silicon shortage, having these compatible parts is like really, really nice. And I really enjoy it. Colin did a video actually, this week one of his Collins Lab videos was about, or will be on Monday, about how op amps are all the same pinout. If you are using op amps in DIP or SOIC or TSOP, single, dual and quad op amps, they all use the same pinout configuration. Like, thankfully the industry decided, okay, here's how we're going to configure power ground plus minus output for all of the different sub op amps in an op amp array. There's not two for transistors. Transistors do not necessarily have a standard pinout. Like BEC is very common, but they can vary. They're not always the same. You know, I wish that all sensors would be the same pinout, of course they're not always, but this one thankfully is. And so the sensor that I forgot about is, you know, we have a couple of these infrared sensors. It's actually quite popular. The infrared sensors from ST, the VL 6180 came first. I think it's about a two meter range. Sorry, a half meter range in the VL53 L0X, about one meter range. This sensor, what's funny is you can look in the animation here, the GIF, it's the old board, but when we revised it, you know, to be a stomach UT sensor, you can see it got turned into a new board. You also see, you know, the layouts I use between sensors is very similar. You know, I have the regulator over here, capacitors, LED. I like to put the sensors in the middle as much as possible and then the shifter over here. So I can actually recycle. You know, the layout is almost identical. And then there's actually an update to this sensor chip, the VL53 L1X. So if you go to the overhead. Can you go to the overhead? Yeah, sorry. This is the... Yeah, you can even move that around a little bit. Yeah, zoom in. This is the, this is a very small sensor, but you can actually see it, I can't see it, but you can see the IR LED being emitted and then detected on the other side. So there's two shiny elements and one's the emitter, the bottom one, as you can tell, and then the receiver's at the top. So this is doing a, you know, a micro lidar. So even though this is the VL53 L0X, this is actually the 1X, the next generation of the chip. Which again, thankfully is the same pinout. The 53 L3 is not, you know, eventually they don't necessarily use the same pinout, but what's cool about this is, you know, first up, I don't have to relay out the board. That's great. I also get to reuse the stencil and the pick and place program. And stencils are not expensive, but they are like $300 or $400, the pick and place stencils. They're framed stencils. They're laser cut and they're gold coated. They're quite nice. And so whenever you can have the same layout, I like doing that. And then you just change the silkscreen. And when you tile it, you touch tile it to be the same exact layout. I verify it, you know, before the PCB to make sure I got that layout tiled exactly the same. And then it just saves me so much effort. I can also reuse the same tester. So like a lot of the common work gets recycled, which is quite nice. So that's what I've got for that. And then we can, you know, I can start sort of moving into the great search or I can talk about the great, you know, what I mean. Yeah, let's do great search. Okay. The great search brought to you by Digikey Native Fruit. Every single week, Age of Fruit and Digikey team up and Lady80 uses her knowledge of searching the Digikey site to find the parts you need. Lady80, what is this week's great search? Okay. So we actually just talked about using the same board layout with parts that have the same pinout. So BMP280 and DPS310. I've talked about the VL53L0X from ST and there's the 53L1X or 1CX. So again, you know, sometimes companies will reuse or competing companies will use the same pinout and package, which is like really awesome because again, you don't have to re-spin a board. You don't have to re-spin a tester. You can recycle the same layout. So this week, I was tasked with, and you'll see why this is, you know, in thematic. We just ran out of ADXL377. This is a really cool chip. Edelund Demyces courses is one of the first companies to make, you know, Edelund and digital accelerometers. They're famous for it. This is a 200G accelerometer. Now, most people don't use 200G accelerometers. They use, you know, two, four, eight, maybe 16. 32G is kind of a high end, you know, for, like, you know, sports and some automotive. But there are, you know, rocketry and mechatronic and robotic reasons that you'll want up to 100 or 200G output. This accelerometer, it's funny. I think this actually uses the same pinout as the ADXL326. I think this one, maybe it's not. But it's very similar. They have a lot of LG, it's 16LGA sensors. And, you know, I really like this one because it was a 200G analog output. And I was like, well, I'd like to see if I could find a replacement. Analog is kind of nice. It's a ratio metric, which means that in whatever the V, sorry, within the 3.3 volt output, it's, you can use that three volt output into your analog reference for your microcontroller. And then exactly halfway zero G. And then, you know, as it, all the way to 3.3 volts is plus 200G, all the way down to ground is negative 200G. So, one of the most interesting is, you know, one reason that you will have, I like to, you know, when a sensor becomes obsolete, it's just became obsolete, it's a longer manufactured. I sometimes like to look at the obsolescence, obsolescence document. So, this is interesting. So, you know, there is that last time by date which just passed. But I'll say that again, with the silicon shortages, these last time dates, these, you know, what they mean and what, you know, it's, whether you can actually get them is different. It used to, you used to have a little bit of time you should be able to get the parts. And now I'm finding that when it's gone, it's really, it's gone, gone, that end of line time. So, I think we have a couple more in order, but I did want to find a replacement. What I thought was interesting was that this ASIC process is being discontinued by the foundry. I have seen this happen. And when this happens, you're really, I mean, there's especially interesting analog process chips. I'll see that they're discontinued and it's not like, oh, you know, they're not popular. It's like, no, that process that, there's not enough companies using that process. The wafer foundry, the company that makes a silicon is actually going to shut down that line. And they're going to replace it with a more profitable line. This happens and when it happens, you are totally S.O.L. I think there's a couple of Macs and chips. I think a couple of analog chips that I got from Macs and Macs remember were also shut down for similar reasons. So that said, you know, at first I was thinking, okay, well, let's find analog, XYZ, you know, chips. I didn't select plus or minus 200 G because maybe there's 100 G available. And of course I want surface mount. So let's see. And then let's look also, of course, only active. See all the analog ones. And you'll see, you know, some of these are the, you know, old mill spec ones. These are some of them are quite ancient. The 335 series we've been carrying for quite a while. But I thought maybe let's look at, you know, the high G rate. So maybe, you know, 50 to 500 G. And unfortunately, you know, they do exist, but they're all like super expensive. They're like about $100 a piece and they're available only from TE. So these are very specialty parts. This is kind of where I sort of have to make decision, look, you know, this analog, but I'm not gonna get an analog version of this accelerometer, but maybe I can get a digital version. You know, maybe I have to give up on that. I do like the analog ones. I think they're really cool, but I also know when to give up. So going back here, we're just gonna go to accelerometers. I only want active ones because I don't want to go through this whole process again so quickly. And then I want X, Y and Z. I really only want triple axis accelerometers. It's very common these days. And then acceleration range, you know, I do, I want to see maybe, you know, 50 to 500. 6,000 G is kind of bonkers. I'm not really ready for that. So do 50 to 500. And you'll see that, you know, there are a couple of really expensive, you know, industrial use ones, but there are also a couple of inexpensive ones as well. Looking at price, there's the list series. I'll say you can't get any accelerometers from ST for next year. So I'm gonna skip that one, the list 200. I think we stock this one. But this one's kind of interesting. Again, I really like analog devices for their accelerometers. So this 200 G accelerometer, first off, they have a lot in stock, which is really nice. Another thing that is cool is that they are, they have this package, the 14LGA. And the 14LGA pinout is shared with almost all their other accelerometers, which is why I was talking about shared pinout. So this is the pinout for the accelerometer. You can see it's, you know, not all the pins are used or some reserved, but it does have two interrupt pins, SPI port and I squared C shared, which are really, I like it when sensors are like, look, we can do I squared C or SPI. Cause I feel like they really, you know, I squared C is tough to bit bang, but SPI is quite easy. SPI is also faster. If you really want to get the data out much quicker, of course you can have multiple sensors on SPI. So I'm really like, I'm always in love when sensor companies have I squared C and SPI dual purpose interfaces. But thankfully, you know, this LGA, when I saw it, I was like, ooh, I wonder, you know, hopefully is that going to be the same as the, the other LGA accelerometers, the, sorry, ADXL 345, which is ancient and historic, right? This one. And also the 343, which is kind of like the next gen of the, the 345. And, you know, we featured this on the Neo trellis and one of the data boxes. It's a very nice, very low cost accelerometer. And again, I've got devices that do really, really good job with their accelerometers. They're not the cheapest, but they're like really reliable, very quiet and you get really good performance out of them. So thankfully, this board, the 345, which is the same pinout as the 343, is, you see, I also did a feather wing of this board. These are the same pinout. And so the 375, I was like, oh, you know, this isn't easy. You know, normally it wouldn't spin up a whole new board for this accelerometer, but if I can reuse that same design to all three of them, I'm loving that because I really like to have one design. So I did, let's see, it's gonna be recent. So for the ADXL, and the ADXL 343, it's actually one of the last boards that we did before we changed over to some of our standard static QT format. So I was like, you know what? Let's make a breakout for this board and while I'm at it, revise the 345 and the 343. So this is what I came up with. It's a little bit of a tight fit, but it does fit. Let's do topsock. So the accelerometers in the center, we've got four big mounting holes, I squared C down here and then the extra SPI pins up here and then everything, everything fits. And there's like a little bit of room for the part number. And then of course on the back, I can have even more part number info, but maybe I'll, you know, over here in the corner, I can maybe fit an XY coordinate marking. But yes, it's the design I made and that's the accelerometer I picked. I wish there wasn't analog 200G accelerometer, but I think the days of analog output accelerometers is kind of over. But you know, I squared CSPI is available and I think not only is this chip gonna be pin compatible, but it's likely gonna be very close software wise as well. I'll probably be able to reuse the Python and Arduino drivers that we've written for the 3XX series for the 200G accelerometer. So I'm gonna pick some of those up and spin out this board and I'll mount on and I'll be able to just work. That's a great church. That's a great church. All right, that's our show for tonight everyone. Thanks for joining us on this desk of Lady Aida. We'll see you in all the ways, shapes and forms all throughout the week this week. Bye. Go back to watching the Tonys.