 All right, it's time digikey and adafruit present This week's iron MPI is from TE that's right new products around digikey adafruit What is the new product? Okay from digikey this week? Happy new year. Yeah. Happy new year first. I am PI of 2021. We're gonna switch it up With a solid-state relay I actually pick out every week a couple different products that I might have for IMPI I'm not gonna tell you what the other one would have been maybe this week I might do it next week, but when I picked this out of my digikey box, I just thought oh my god This is so cute. This is like the cutest MPI. I gotta do it for this week. So this week it is the I'll get the full name right the SSR MP, which I think is like Solid-state relay micro package or mini package from TE. These are adorable little solid-state relays. So Here is what it looks like Solid-state relay. I just love the build of this, right? I guess it's a TE and that a subgroup called Potter and Bermfield Which just sounds like a really great pub in England or something This solid-state relay, they're small, right? They're they're only you know to go about inch by an inch by you know three quarters of an inch or so a half an inch But these are pretty powerful relays. I mean they can handle up to 480 volts AC up to 25 amps They've got a great mechanical package What I'd like is of course they give you a 3d model so you can put this into your mechanical design import it directly They have like STLs and 3d PDFs and all that good stuff This solid-state relay is perfect for when you have a bunch of AC you want to control So inside so this is the mechanical dimensions as I mentioned. It's quite small. It's about 22 millimeters by 22 millimeter square and then there's a heat sink that's That does extend as a solid chunk of aluminum which is quite nice for heat-sinking your solid-state relay and inside there is a photo opto isolated Input that controls the triac output for controlling AC So I like that they they put that extra step of having it be isolated and there's your cross and non-zero cross Versions we can chat about that later For connecting to it. It's got these spade connector ends. They're standard ones. I think quarter inch the other is Point one seven eight five which is some 16th, so we're like, you know five sixteenths or something of an inch and you can use standard Spade connectors to connect to it. So, you know, we saw a kit, but you can also get cables pre-made With spade lugs on them for very quick connects So why use a solid-state relay? Well, you don't have to for a lot of use cases And often people start AC control or DC control project through the relay Here's a relay from te these come in like every size and shape and Wheelies are great. They're inexpensive and they're really easy to use and they're fully isolated So this is you know, I love these transparent relays, which are also handy for telling what's going on with your relay But also wonderful for documentation So on the right you see there's a coil when current passes through this coil. It turns into an electromagnet There's a little fair magnetic core inside of it and on the left-hand side you see a single pole double throw Connection that little armature in between it goes back and forth if it's magnetized it pulls in Otherwise, it's kind of pushed out by a spring contact and that's what controls the switch right the switch is either connected to the left Or to the right pole So this is how a relay works and wheelies are great because they're so simple right you apply power It switches you remove power. It's no longer switching. This is like an ancient Electronic technology that we're still using and it's great, but why would you not want to use a relay? Well? One thing about a relay is is there a little slow, right? They do take you know up to 10 milliseconds because there's like a mechanical switch. They have to mechanically move This little flipper from the left to the right. So they're not instantaneous, right? There's there is some millisecond to lanes inconsistent you you can measure it but it might be different in time depending on the temperature or You know mechanical stresses on the system and also, you know eventually as those two contacts This is a two photos on the left is a Totally clean contact as that contact gets closer and closer Infinitely close it starts to chatter a little bit and there's an arc from the Voltage across the gap and that can cause oxidation on the right You can see after like a hundred thousand switches you get this like corroded contact And so that's why relays are replaceable. They're there, you know for hobbyist projects are soldered in place but for you know if you look at the relays for example in if you ever walk by like a light switch on them like a cross crossing light Or a traffic lamp They use relays and you'll see the gigantic Removable relays and they're you know whenever the traffic light breaks. It's usually because the relay You know this happens the relay because they're they're switching on and off, you know every few minutes to control the traffic And so they get oxidized and they stop working and it's you know, it happens after 10,000 20,000 whatever sell thousand contacts And so if you're if you need something to switch very quickly or you need something that does not oxidize and corrode after Some time that's when you'd want to move to an SSR So a solid-state relay which is you know, it says a word relay in it, but it's not really I mean like It's not like a solid-state version of a relay. It's like a totally different mechanism of operation, but in the name stuck So in this case, this is a dimmer switch. So, you know, if you have lighting for example This is a common use of SSRs You not only are they used for switching on and off just like turning on an oven or turning off the AC or whatever But they're used for dimming lights and so, you know lights are they're gonna be operating at 50 Hertz or 60 Hertz So you want to like PWM the light and you can see here The blue line is the AC voltage and then the red line is when you turn it on and off And you see like it basically it's only on half the time and so that light is halfway dim So it's a little it's different than DC voltage PWM, but it's kind of similar You're cutting the AC waveform down to to reduce the amount of current going through your lamp But think about if you're switching on a relay on and off 60 Hertz 60 times a second to get this dimming effect Well, I mean it's going to burn out in five minutes. It's not gonna work out and also notice that You may want to turn on in this case it doesn't but sometimes you want to turn on the power only When it crosses zero so you don't get this big spike in voltage and for those you can use a zero crossing SSR There they have cool properties where they only turn on right when the the voltage starts to Move up from positive or negative from zero volts Which can reduce wear on some electronic components, especially lighting if it's incandescent and you want to slowly ramp up the voltage so You know did you he has a really good guide if you want to use SSRs, you know, there is a Couple of downsides one. It's going to be more expensive than a relay. You're a relay. They're they're like a couple bucks SSR It is about ten dollars instead. So it's more expensive second. You do have to heat sink them Third some of them are not up to isolated. This one happens to be but not all of them are so do you check out this? Guide that did you keep wrote to let you know all about it and of course, they're only good for AC voltage not good for DC voltage And they usually have more limitations on the amount of current and voltage because it has to it's not a mechanical switch It has to kind of dissipate some heat and so that will affect how much Current you can switch on and off and the voltage and all that so you have to care about the rating a little bit more They have lower ratings usually But you know if you're doing AC switching especially of lighting or you just don't deal with a mechanical chatter You just want something that's a solid state solution This is an adorable SSR and it's a size of a relay. Yeah, here's some different options. You've got they're all Activated by 4 to 12 volts. I think the series. There's 240 volt AC version and there's a 480 volt AC version They can go from 10 amps Up to 25 amps mounted to a heat sink check the data sheet and there's of course a zero voltage or You know turn on whatever the heck you want version of these SSR. So they have it. There's a whole family of them That said we picked out one that we thought was pretty handy. I think this is a 24 volt 16 amp version and you can check it out. These are available from digikey and Check out the whole family. Just search for SS our MP to get The listing of all the different products that are available in this family and don't forget the ways finest you can go Did you keep calm for such short for C5 and TV or you can look at the code here for one SS RMP to four zero two one six and D or you can just search for What do you think good thing SSR MP you think yeah, that's the whole family because there's some that are a little more Expensive like they think there's more expensive version. There's ones that are like 10 bucks Depending on the Functional specifications, okay, so this is what I like this. It's such an adorable little package first off. Look at how small and cute This is it's like so small and cute So it's got this embedded heat sink, which I really liked. It's like potted in it's a nice thick heat sink with mounting tabs It's nice and flat so you can mount it to a heat sink Everything is labeled. It's you know, got the Rojas label on it It's got the output telling you exactly what it's rated for It's got the input telling you sorry. It's four to 32 volts DC The you are and the CE marking as well. And okay, check this out. There's a little LED I thought this was so cute. You can when you turn this on a little light goes on so I'm just giving it five volts So I'm obviously not paid to any AC's This is safe for me to touch just fine, but there's a little indicator that tell you so, you know If this was going really fast, it would be dim, but you'd at least be able to see that it's being activated So I like that about this cute little SSRMP series. Check it out That is this the week's I'm an MPI. Did you get an Advert?