 And welcome to Lady Aida, happy new year 2023 doing a show first day of the year. That's right. We do a show on Sundays and we did a show last Sunday. Don't matter what Sunday it is, we always do these. We're here again. Happy new year. It's me, Lady Aida, with me, Mr. Lady Aida on camera control, behind the scenes. We got a couple new designs that I've been working on so I thought I would show them off. So let's kick it first off with this new ESP feather which you did a little video with. So we've had the ESP32 S2 and S3 feathers that have the TFT on the opposite side with a module on the bottom. So you put them to a breadboard and the TFT is on top and the module is on the bottom. And I really like those designs and those are all good and everything. But one of the things that I thought would be neat would be to have a reverse mounted feather. So you could still use feather wings on the back by soldering them with like a socket header up and then male header down like that. But then you have more space on the top here so you can have like GPIO buttons and like this is a reset button. So you can have like a little panel mount or like control situation and you know it's nice it flat easier to mount. So this is the 1.14 inch 240 by 135 color TFT and you can see I've got some demo code here and when I press the buttons you know it displays them and there's also a battery monitor. I don't have a battery plugged in for the battery monitor. I have been using the LC 709203 but since the chip shortage occurred you know that part is end of line. The replacement is like a 0.4 millimeter BGA and so I'm not too excited about it. So I replaced it with you know so it was like very on the S3 especially the iSquad C was very finicky with that part. Like it works in Arduino but not in circuit Python and it was like you have to wake it up and then it's like clock stretchy and whatever. It's a good chip the LC 709 but like I said discontinued anyways. So I'm replacing it with the Mac 17 048 which is another you know under $1 iSquad C battery monitor that doesn't use a current sensor resistor. Remember we showed that off on the great search like a couple months ago because I had to find a replacement for the LC 709. This one's good and also with this now that I have it in a kit I was able to do the low power measurement. And the low power measurement is great. One side effect of the chip shortage is I've moved from using the AP2112's which were my favorite LDO's 3.3 volt 500 600 milliamp LDO's. And I've moved using the RT9080. The RT9080 used to be more expensive than the AP2112 that RT9080 is now cheaper and was easier to get. And so I moved to that and what's nice is the quiescent current is a lot lower. So you know ESP32 S2 design like a feather used to do like 70 microamps quiescent and now it's as low as 20 25 milliamps microamps quiescent. So you know much better low power use and the battery monitor is also you know nice and low low battery use as well. And as an option you know on this version I have a BME 280 soldered on because of the self heating. Of course you want to like you know only use that if you're going to low power mode. So I'm leaving the footprint there but I'm not I'm not going to populate it for the product to start. And then if we do populate it I have to document like here's how to take measurements from the BME 280 before you turn on the backlight before you turn on the Wi-Fi so you can get a nice you know cold ambient temperature reading. Otherwise it the humidity will be too low because it's got heated up and the temperature will be too high. So this is a design. So it's actually out for the PCVs are out for manufacture get the PCVs in and we'll get this in the store in the next couple of weeks. So it's exciting and then we'll do an ESP32 S3 version as well. I like both the S2 and the S3. You know the S2 has a little bit more stable and I believe the S2 has DAX and the S3 does not but it has dual core and Bluetooth. So you know there's there's reasons for both. So I'll just keep making both because that mini module is the same footprint. And then other things on this board NeoPixel, Stema QT, reset button. And then like I mentioned three IO buttons that you can use for interfacing. So you know even like small projects plug-in a Stema QT sensor maybe a Laura feather wing and now you've got your own you know all in one package without having to use a breadboard. So that's a one new design that's kicking off the new year. Any questions about that or? If you're taking the what's the lowest current draw you can get Circuit Python done to I realize it won't be very low but I'm curious. Well you know we do have deep sleep support in Circuit Python. So on the ESP32 S2 you will get down to that 20 microamps. Dan Halbert really like figured out all little tweaks to make it work so that you know with deep sleep you do reset you know you do a hard reset when you come out of deep sleep but you'll get down to 20 microamps in light sleep which you can wake up directly back at the code like you don't lose your state. It's like four milliamps like two to four milliamps something like that. Okay cool. Okay great. All right what's next? Okay next up ding ding time for Cowbell. We have to get the Cowbell back here. Yeah I'll get the library of sounds and video. Yeah we'll get that later. You were up late last night. Yeah it's well yeah it's new year. We were having fun with friends. So before I went on leave we did get one Cowbell done which is cool. I just like things got just so busy for me but we didn't get this Proto Cowbell. I always like to start with the prototyping feather wing or shield or bonnet or hat or whatever. So this was just make it really easy people to prototype. You see the nice silk screen using Penguin. The STEMI QT port on one side and the nice right angle reset button and then here I have it soldered with stacking headers and then you know you can plug in either your PyCow or PyCow W on there you can reset and you can connect sensors so very handy very low cost and then we got all the headers in the shop too so people can like if you want the headers on top or the bottom whatever mix match. So the next one I always like to you know what I was talking to Phil one of the you know big successes of feather back in like 2017 or whatever when we were doing a lot of feathers or 2015 is I would do a feather a week like every week at a feather or feather wing and for for a year I had like 50 designs one a week starting with you know the basic feathers that I launched with and then I just added more and more and that kind of like kick started the platform and so with the Cowbells you know the the PyCow has been around for the sorry the Pico has been around for a while a couple years and the Pico W the PyCow has been around for like about a year and so you know the pinout format is pretty well established so this design is a longer feather you know basically a longer feather wing but made as a Cowbell so you've got a micro SD slot here so this is you know you can if folks remember I did a great search on this micro SD slot so the standard micro SD slot that I tend to use is actually too wide to fit between the header so I took find a new micro SD and this one from Molex is quite nice it's pull pull so you don't push to release you pull but it's a very high quality you know it's a Molex part you can see the part number on there it's like 23220823d it's nice and slim it's you know if it's very nicely between and then we even have a little bit of space for part marking and then for the real-time clock I've got PCF 8523 which is low cost I like that it has battery backup but you could also you know you can generally power to the main power supply 3 to 5 volts which again is really nice and then battery backup if you want so this coin cell battery holder also nicely fits right between the headers you can see it's like perfect fit and then a couple passes a 7qt port because I feel like we're going to data log we're going to public data log sensors so this is very handy and then a reset button even though this will probably be underneath your pico pie cow still by be handy to have a reset button eventually I'll make like a pico doubler you know I mean where you can have all the cowbells next to each other so probably have like you know Laura cowbell and you know RGB matrix cowbell and Scorpio cowbell whatever so people can like stack them one you know four in a row and you can make you know fairly advanced projects so this is the next one so I just got these prototypes I have to test them but I'm pretty confident because I've used the PCF 8523 and SD cards so much so unless I did a pinout mistake these are good to go folks had a question yeah more of a request doubler a triplet cowbell yeah that's like I said I'm probably gonna do that once I have a couple I want to get a couple cowbells going though I'll be able to test it I'll use a surface mount 2x20 header so you can just plug them in it's interesting because you know I looked at the Raspberry Pi pico accessories and somewhere like this like the slim style you know feather shield it goes underneath or goes over but there's also a lot that the the pico plugs into the back like a display and so it's like it's like there's two ways of doing it but for now I'm starting with these slim style you know cowbells okay okay next up we'll be making pico versions of many all feather wings some I don't know if many again I don't know if I'm gonna be making 50 but I'll be making a bunch I mean if people request pop them in the chat or tweet them at us or toot them on the mastodons and yeah look at our new product show we talked about one mastodon and all that stuff so you can tag us there we're also everywhere we're gonna be everywhere until the end all right okay what else so that leads us into the great search search time the great search brought you by digikey native you thank you so much digikey every single week lady did user powered of engineering to help you find you yes you things on digikey.com that are probably hard to find or maybe need help getting that part or who knows because it's been an adventure in the world of chip shortages of finding what is this week's great search okay let's go to the overhead real fast I've realized one of the things that you know I've been doing is I'm experimenting with slight component changes like I've gotten so used to some of our parts that I thought for the new year I kind of explore variations so for example almost all of our boards have these little tactile buttons these you know I call them mini-tactiles they're like three by six two by five millimeter-ish tactile buttons and I use them all the time for reset buttons or mode selects you know I've got them here on this kb2040 for the boot and reset button and these are good but I was thinking you know these have like little little mini actuators and I noticed that I saw some folks with boards that have these larger actuators like Pimerone uses some of them I've seen one with some other German boards I've seen masted on toots about and so I thought I'd got some of these and use them and I rather like them like it's a bit bigger of an actuator but it's still very clicky and I think it's you know it's maybe a little bit easier to press because it's a little bit more surface area a little more tactile so I thought I would show this part because I didn't realize that this was available on ditch keys actually available at a very good price so let's go to the website and find them to first of all I don't want to mention that SD card that I showed for this board the little micro SD the skinny one if you're like ooh I really like that skinny micro SD card we covered this in an earlier great search so go check that out and then if you want to ate a longer but feathering format check that out too and you can see actually interestingly enough this has a kind of a wider oval actuator this is the original KMR2 button that we use so that button footprint is the same but the actuator size has varied over time so let's um let's go to digiki so we call these well so originally if you look at all my schematics I call these KMR2s because that's the original even if I don't necessarily use that exact part number anymore and that's not what we are going to find here but I did want to show it so this is the KMR2 you know you can see that kind of oval actuator and then the size is about five by three millimeters again the size of my very so I'm not gonna check that box because I want to find similar switches so let's find active SPST the switch function off mom means it's off normally and then momentarily when you press it it turns on so that's what I want the contact rating is not important to me because I don't use these as power switches I use them only for signaling so it's like they're passing you know micro amps at three volts so I don't care about that their surface mount their top actuated the actuator height I don't want to select because I you know that might vary the termination style might vary the outline might vary non-aluminated operating force may vary and then switch travel and mechanical life may vary so let's see what what pops up here this should give me quite a few options so looking down you see kind of the standard these are the six by six millimeter tactiles these are very very popular right they're very expensive this kind has a little nub long actuators extra long you can see this is similar to what we're looking for but let's let's pair it down so the most important thing is the sizing so remember that size was kind of like four and a half to point eight is basically five by three the only thing is is that it's like you know it may vary so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to select a range of parts I'm gonna do four point six by two point eight and then let's see six by three point two and let me see I don't want to go bigger than six there's a couple of sizes here that might be close enough let's see four point two by two point eight four point two by three point two they're definitely not square you know they're rectangular but the size might vary a little bit I think these are some good options though okay well let's see what what pops up here okay cool so you can see this is kind of what I'm looking at so these you can see some of these have round actuators and some have like really big pillowy ones so for me what's important is pricing so let's look at pricing for 5,000 because I'm going to be buying a lot of these and then of course if the operating force is important to you you can select it to me because it's rarely used it's just a tactile switch it's not that important so you'll see some bigger switches got put in here because of the sizing so this is six by three point three and then these are some other six by three so let's remove those let's go only the four point sevens okay cool and here we are so we've got a couple options you've got ones with the black actuator white this one looks like it's a little bit taller I ended up going with the arcade but I do want to show that there's a lot of different options like if you want if you do want the little tiny button those are available and if you like you know white actuator that's cool but what I really liked was these arcades because first off they're you know fairly inexpensive all these these pts ones are also very inexpensive about ten cents eleven cents but you can get them either 250 gram force actuations a little bit tougher or 160 gram force and you know both are the same package 4.2 by 3.2 and even though these these might see if the other one has a little bit better now even though this one it doesn't even image at the bottom but I do have the data sheet up here so the footprint even though that the size you know might vary by point one millimeter here and there the footprint actually worked exactly the same like I use my standard KMR 2 footprint and I use this part and you know the overhead real fast you can see it fits very nicely it picks in place very nicely it has four solder points and I rather like this button so you know and this is a 250 gram force it's particularly clicky but I kind of like that I like the force feedback of a high tactile high clickiness button so I'm gonna probably be moving you know a lot of my boards especially new ones over from these smaller tactile to these nice larger ones these buttons are a little bit less expensive and I like the nice oval actuator as well so congratulations the RKB you have one over the KMR 2 to win for the button of the week and that's a great search and that's weeks that's this week's desk of lady about add a couple questions yes so let's do these what type of glue is safe for TFT displays for glue I mean you can use you know six what e6000 but I use tape okay VHV tape accept some shout out for did you key search yay can you get other colors or just black and white I need I like the bigger actuator I do yeah I looked in case of other colors I only saw black and white you know those are two well this is when there's a blue you want to go to my computer real fast this one looks like it's available like a bluish color unless it's a it's like the unless the photo is just a little confusing I don't know that you can search by color you can't let me see if the data sheet yeah looks like you can get like a blue color so these are your color options okay next up and someone has some advice as well what related recommendations for an advanced circuit Python editor with linter and formatter support autocomplete etc I find million thawney to basic and the plug-in for VS code is too reliable for me someone mentioned pie charm but what do you suggest yeah I use Adam but I also don't use a lot of the like I don't use the autocomplete stuff I don't unfortunately just continued but if you use Adam and the pie com serial plug in I rather like it because it has a serial monitor at the bottom and auto reconnects so I tend to use Adam but again it got discontinued yeah okay and let me just check the other chat I believe that is it we're back so you'll see our shows throughout the week on Wednesday show and tell and ask an engineer should be a pretty straightforward week tomorrow's a holiday for a team they were not shipping yeah but we're we're back and we have a bunch of exciting things ahead we'll be switching things up on where we do some of our shows and more but more content y'all have probably been watching the blog and more we have a ton of new designs we've been filming every day going on we saw this cowbell and then yeah if you guys have other suggestions for Pico or pie cowbells that you want just toss them in the chat tag Mr. Lady Ada or tag us on the mastodon were I think Mr. Lady Ada probably put it in the discord chat too so you can yeah we're at a fruit well I know there's like a fruit at something something I could just search right a fruit on any instance that's fine yeah okay all right and that's a show thank you so much everybody we very much appreciate it see you next week