 And welcome to Lady Aida. Hi everybody and welcome to the desk of Lady Aida, the pre-Eclipse edition. So everyone going in North America is going to see this eclipse tomorrow. Hopefully we will see it here in New York City. But in preparation, I have designed some hardware. So let's go to the overhead. I'll show off some of the testers that I just did. So I got a bunch of final PCBs in like the, there you go. The B&L, BFF, this is a B&L055, nine-dof sensor, which has a built-in microcontroller. Actually, ironically, a SAMD21, which then converts it from like XYZ into like quaternion angle or Euler angles. And there's also a BMP280, which will give you precision, temperature and barometric pressure sensing. I said against humidity sensing because I figured like we have a lot of low cost humidity sensors and most people want no altitude and that's what the BMP280 would give you. And some jumpers. This is a tester that we designed and let's see how you can power it. It uses a RP2040. And the only thing that's a little tricky is you have to have it upside down because I want to test all the jumpers. So you have to have the board upside down. I'm going to move this a little bit, so it's easier for me to align. And then live demo, but I think it can do this. It's this USB, upside down. There you go. See, it beeps and the LED blinks letting you know that it passed test. It does take a few seconds because the, whenever you want to change the address or reset the B&L055, it takes like 400 plus milliseconds sometimes for it to like wake up and start responding to I-squared, so you don't know why. Anyway, so that's the B&L055. I've also got the two infrared boards that I worked on. Hold on this way and this way. So with these, they're actually, they seem similar, but they're actually, the testing was like totally different. So for this one, this is like a general purpose IR receiver. And so for this one, I have to test a signal from the vertical and horizontal infrared. So there's two sensors here, horizontal and vertical. I don't want to make sure that both are working, so I have to like listen on both. Another thing about infrared receivers as opposed to, one second, this board, the other board, which is a infrared demodulator. The demodulator is like not, it doesn't have any like brains to it. It's like, if it gets 38 kilohertz signal, the pin goes low. It's like very, very basic. Whereas the infrared receiver is actually looking for pulses that conform to a certain number of pulses in the width of the pulses. That's because it's looking for infrared remote codes and the codes like are on off like da, da, da, da, da. This one doesn't care. And so the test is actually different. What this tester does is it sends a short number of control burst codes and checks the horizontal and vertical. So let me just quickly show that off. And it's very fast. You can even see it's getting the signal here. And then the demodulator is a little bit different. I mean, you can only tell the difference from the tester itself. But this has a continuous stream. Oh, yeah, it's kind of as you can see. So you see how it's like a continuous stream? It's any continuous stream, which means that this board would not, should not be passing. So if I test this, yeah, it actually like doesn't see the signal because there's so many pulses that this infrared receiver is like, you know, that's not a valid receiver code. It must be like ambient noise or something. Whereas the demodulator, yeah, the demodulator is happy to show exactly the signal that it's receiving. So you see these are both lit up at the same time. For different tests and different breakouts, I think a lot of people are going to be like, why you have two breakouts, what's the difference between these two? This one is perfect for remote control leading. And this one is perfect for, it can do remote controls, but what's better for is general purpose, like you're bouncing an IR signal or you're sending data over IR that isn't in remote control protocol style. So those are the three testers I worked on yesterday. Another board that I wrapped up is I've had one last mistake. You can see here this little wire for the USB host BFF. But the final mistake I made was so small that I'm comfortable with booking the PCB just with this little wire fix. Basically, one of the things about CAD software is it's very easy to miss. I thought that one pin was labeled a certain way, but it was actually another way. And I ended up swapping the inverted and non-inverted 5-volt enable signal in case you wanted to disable the power to the micro-B port. So I ordered these PCBs out today. So that's kind of fun. I think this can be good for some projects where people want to make very small USB adapters or converters, especially if this was soldered right onto the back here, which you can. You can kind of put it like piggyback. See if I have the host here. But the PCB is, yeah, I put it away. But the PCB is thin enough that you can solder them just like this and then cut the leads off. And then you've got this very short sandwich. But enough clearance that if there's any components on the back, they're good to go. And then, of course, if you have the boards that have an antenna here, you don't want to have the micro-B port in the way. But how are you doing on time? I'm good. OK, let's go to the computer, and I'll show off some. Oops, wait, I won't put that in there. There's nothing more deadly than putting the wrong component in a box because then later, like, where's that part that I can find it? And it's in a box. And all our boxes look the same. They're all black. You know who bought that. OK. I designed a couple of trinkies. So one is a request from AT makers for a TRS trinkie. And this one has, as you'd expect, a TRRS jack. So that's something that's a tip, ring, ring sleeve. So it's used for like, you know, old iPhones back when they or phones when they were allowed to just plug in a headphone jack, they'd have stereo. So ring and tip. And then the second ring would be for microphone. So it's for contacts. And that means you can also split the signal a bunch of different ways. And then to the back, there's a bunch of different ways. Two of the pins also have switches on them. So the tip and the first ring have a little switch. And the switch disconnects. So you can use it for detecting when something's plugged in or for a routing signal. And the request we had was to put every pin on an analog input and not connect it to, like, power ground. Like, there is a standard, like, usually sleeve is ground. But sometimes there's different standards. And sometimes you want to put power on a pin. And sometimes you don't. So basically, this has every pin connected to a GPIO. So you have, like, full freedom on what you want to connect it to. Only thing is you're not going to be able to source a lot of power. So you can, like, light up an LED or maybe drive a potentiometer. But I definitely wouldn't be able to control a motor. But maybe that's OK. You know, there's some accessibility switches that are potentiometers or they maybe have a little LED or maybe they have two-way switches. And then it goes into the SAMD 21. Like I mentioned, we have, like, a billion SAMD 21s because I ordered two years' worth and they all shipped in one week. Only a pixel for signaling. You can do on circuit Python on this. And then, unlike the other trinkets, you know, like this one where I have the USB into the PCB, I just use a 2-millimeter thick PCB. Only thing is, is that, like, it is easy to pull out. I'm just going to go the overhead a little fast to show it. I mean, it grips, but it's, like, you know, it will plug in and it sits. But, like, if you, it just, it does yank out quite easily because there's no retaining, you just a little bumpy retaining clip that you see the little bumps in there. There's another dent that would hold it in place. It's fine for something like this where this doesn't get moved and there's nothing connected to it. This is a temperature and humidity sensor. Like, you're going to just leave it plugged in and it doesn't, it doesn't matter. Can you go to the computer? Yes, I am. No, it's fine. I just finished. Talking about USB A. But for this, because there's going to be this cable attach, it's going to be yanking and moving and, like, you know, maybe the person, you know, pulls on it a little bit by accident or on purpose. I wanted to have a proper USB A connector. And this looks like a blue fruit fratting. Like this. So it sticks out a little bit more. It's a little, you know, adds a little bit more expense. But these are fairly through the through-hole components. You need to do a through-hole processing step. Though it's nice as if they're nice and solid. You see this mechanical through-hole connection. And they really, once it's in, it's like any other USB A connector. It's a very solid connection. So I sent this off, so we'll get it soon. Very low cost, but, like, I think a great accessibility to USB adapter. And again, with Circuit Python, it's going to be, like, so great and easy to be just, like, different configurations, different scripts, just drag and drop it. And now it's an HID keyboard. Now it's an HID mouse. Now it's something else, MIDI, whatever, for all sorts of accessibility projects. The next one, and because we were, I was talking to Liz about, we did this Elgato Lite controller board. Liz did this a few weeks ago. And one of the things that we were chatting about is that there is a protocol from Microsoft called the, it was like Pixel Array, Light Array, HID, yeah, Lamp Array. So they have this new dynamic lighting system, which is, like, basically NeoPixels. And over HID, you can, well, I don't want to see chapter nine, you can do all sorts of controls and light it up. And I think, like, you know, they started, they practiced this a little bit with, when we had the matrix portal, there was, like, the, Microsoft had this, like, controlling code that would let you, like, draw whatever you wanted on an LED matrix. And so this might be related, but basically they have, like, all these partners, everybody who makes, like, RGB LED toys, you know, keyboards, mice, motherboard, whatever, they're gonna add support for it. So it's like, oh, you know, we're probably gonna get this working great on Arduino or circuit Python. So let's make it a little tricky to help with that as well. And it's really basic because it's just, again, a SAMD 21. And again, because there's cables coming off the end, it connects to something. I wanted, like, a solid USB connection. SAMD 21, regulate our little mini NeoPixel, just for, because it's a little micro indicator, level shifter. So this is a 74HCT2G34, a two-line level shifter for data and clock, and then two 100 Ohm resistors, leaning out to a terminal block, which will come pre-assaulted, so you can easily screw in whatever. And so now you can use either one dot star strip or two NeoPixel strips. The data and clock could be used for two strips if you wanted to. SAMD 21 doesn't have, like, a lot. I don't think, we didn't get DMA working. I mean, you can kind of do it by making it, turning it into an SPI signal, and then you can DMA the SPI. It's like, if it's possible, it's not great. And these are SPI pins. But I think, again, it's designed to be extremely low cost and simple. It's gonna be a couple bucks, you plug it in, you know, and you get NeoPixels out. Okay, and then we had, we're gonna wrap this up and go into the great search, we had a request because people were like, well, you know, you're doing these trinkets with USB, but a lot of people nowadays have modern Mac laptops and the Mac laptops have USB type C. And we have a little adapter, but it's like, wouldn't it be great if the trinket just had USB-C already in? So I got some connectors. Let's go to the overhead real fast. So these are edge, because you want it to be a plug that plugs out. So this is a plug that's actually edge mounted. You see, it's actually like mounted in the middle and it's got a bunch of contacts. The only thing is, I'll say, you know, it's solid, but I don't know, it feels, it's like a little wiggly, you know, because it doesn't have a lot of strong mechanical, sorry, mechanical connection. It's got all the connectors and they're like little pincers and they pince onto the PCB, but there isn't like a through-hole component. There's just a lot of SMT pads, which is fine as long as you have a mechanical enclosure that keeps this steady. Another thing is, you need to solder this in. I actually don't even know the process because you need to have solder on both sides and then you have to slip this on. So it seems like a very like complicated process to solder this component because both sides get soldered at the same time and it has to be hand-slotted in. So what I wanted to find to be able to do these trinkets is a pickin' placeable or easily placeable, not this like edge-slotted USB-C plug that's fairly low-cost that I can use for my trinkets to make my trinkets into a USB-C connector. So that's gonna be the great search. Yeah, a great search brought to you by Digikey and Ada for it every single week. We have Lady Ada show you how to find things on digikey.com. Lady Ada, take it away. Okay, I'm designing a bunch of trinky boards. Let's make sure those trinky. Trinky boards, these trinky boards have a USB-A PCB connector that plugs into a port and they're just very low-cost and designed to give you a little bit of capability using a SAM-D21 or an RP2040 chip. Here's kind of a more advanced trinky. Then we had a couple people ask, hey, can you make a version with a USB-C connector? Now, because USB-C is double-sided and it's also a very fine pitch, you can't really make a PCB that slots. I mean, you technically could, but it would not last very long. I think the traces would come off pretty quickly. So you can't do this hack where you just have a really thick PCB and these pads. Instead, you don't have to have a connector. So what I want though is not a USB-A connector. We have a lot of boards that have USB-A, what I want, sorry, USB-C socket. What I want is a USB-C plug. So go to the overhead again, I'll show this real fast. So this is a USB-C plug, right? It matches one of these cables. It's a plug that can solder onto the PCB. But the thing about this is that it's like this straddle mount, I was just talking about this, where all the pins are soldered onto each side. And so this looks like a very time-consuming process because I think you have to apply solder paste to both sides and you have to slot it exactly has to fit perfectly in and align. And there's like, you know, like no, you know, there's a very fine pitch parts and there's no through-hole component that goes through the PCB. And so this is like, in my opinion, a little wiggly. You can see this is wiggling. I don't know, it's like a little loose tooth. I think it'll be okay, but I think it'll eventually break off. And so what I want is to find a component on Digi-Key that'll let me turn my Trinky, which I just had in my hand. Here you go. Trinky, and instead of having USB-C socket, like these are, you know, a dime a dozen, we've covered these on the great search. I want the opposite, with a little bit of through-hole connectivity if possible, surface mount, but also through-hole the way the sockets are so that we can pick and place them. But the components are, that, you know, the components need hand placement like this straddle mount. Okay, so let's go to the computer. Now we know what we want. So let's go to Digi-Key and let's type in USB connector, because that's what we want. So we definitely want USB connector assembly and they have, you know, 4,000, all sorts of things. Micro-B type A, HDMI, whatever. Also like this part that goes onto a cable. So let's, let's first, look, sorry, stuff on my desk. Let's only look for active. And we want it to be a plug, but I'm also gonna grab this dash in case there's something that didn't get categorized properly. And I want it to be, see, oh, not everything is a selectable. So now USB type C. There you go. So let's apply. All right, so I'm only at 62. And then I think I'm also going to search for normally stocking, because I wanna get something that you can actually buy. So there are like a couple of mounting types, but I think the thing is, is that for something like this, I really wanna see the photo and I look at the datasheet because it's like surface mount might include that straddle mount, although they do say straddle mount here, but maybe do I want board edge surface mount? I don't know. So let's look. And then let's just sort by price to start, because who knows. So this one is kind of cool. It looks like a power connector, but it plugs on the tops. This is for like something would, it'd be kind of cool to be a right angle PCB. Ditto, this one is a right angle connector. This one looks like a straddle mount. So let's take a look at this. I don't see if they have the datasheet. They might not, but it pretty, it's pretty clearly a straddle mount. You can see the little legs, the teens here that they grabs onto the PCB. And then yeah, this is bulk. So this is the fact that the packaging is bulk means that it has to be placed by hand. It doesn't come on a pick and place tape and wheel. This is also straddle mount. This one is very clearly straddle mount because you can actually even see the two layers of pins. I don't want that. This one is like a weird photo, but let's look at what it looks like in person. Also, straddle mount, it's really common. I don't know. I guess it was like mass manufacturing. Maybe I'd go with that. This one, let's look at the 360. Hold on, it's loading. Okay, yeah, this is also straddle mount. You can see the two rows of pins. Ooh. Straddle mount. This is also a straddle mount. This one is not actually, this is like the first one that is not a straddle mount, but it's actually gonna be, yeah, they don't have the proper full data sheet. Let's see if maybe we can get another data sheet. No. Let's see if we can look at the EDA model. Yeah, so this one is actually possible because it has all the surface mount pins when they go on the top, and then it has two through-hole slots, so this one would actually be okay. This one is a little bit, let's see, yeah, here you go. So you can actually see here's the slot, and then there's the two surface mount rows. Only thing is I don't need two rows, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep looking. This one did out. This one is actually kind of similar to the other one. There's two rows of surface mount, and then there's a slot. This one actually would be pretty good. This one's vertical, so that's not gonna work. This is a socket, don't know why this moved in here. Another straddle mount, another straddle mount, another straddle mount. These are really good photos of the straddle mount though. Vertical, another vertical, straddle mount, and vertical. This is, oh no, there's like a billion. Well, I know that this is, okay. This one's interesting because it's half surface mount, half through-hole, it actually probably would be okay to use, this is the footprint. So you see it's actually the full all the pins, the USB three pins, one row surface mount, and then the rest are through-hole. So this is gonna be very mechanically solid. So if I try other stuff and it doesn't work, this for sure is not going anywhere. I mean like all those through-hole connectors plus the slots is gonna be super great. This is another two-slot version, vertical. And then let's look at this. Eventually I'm gonna bump into the one I did pick in the end. Okay, so this is the one, this is the first one that I was like, actually this is what I want. Because you can kind of see on the footprint, there's only one row because I don't need USB three. I don't need all the pins. I just want the data power and ground. And then like a CC pin. And then it's got two slots. It's got a little bit of a ground pad to give it a little bit more mechanical connection. But the two slots I think make it like a good winner. You can see the slots that go through the PCB. And the PCB actually butts up here. You see this is the edge of the PCB. So it jams up against the PCB and then it has this through-hole. So like together, that keeps it from, if you make the PCB cut exactly at the right length, it means it doesn't wedge too much and it doesn't torque too much. So this is the one I'm actually gonna end up using. And I'll just quickly show the, USB type C plug breakout that I designed with this component. So I'm gonna find out if this is gonna be a good footprint. That's the thing I have to figure out next. But this is the USB-C like plug. I think this is the correct length. These are all those pads. And then these are the socket and then the milling layer. See if I can put that front because it's interesting. Let me hide the pads. There you go. You can see this is the milling layer. That's where the slot is gonna be cut out, the plated slot. And then there's a little bit of like this ground pad here just for good locks and we can get a little more mechanical connection. And then these pads and then ideally you know this PCB edge again butts up against the connector and gives me that extra mechanical strength. So hopefully this will work. I really want something nice and strong so that people don't yank, pull, twist. I'll report back if this works. Hopefully my PCBs will show up soon. I'll solder this connector on and I'll let you know. This is my pick for the great search. That's a great search. All right, thanks so much. Please wear your protective glasses. Yes. If you can stare at the sun tomorrow. And we'll see everybody during the week. Okay, thanks everybody. Bye bye. Have a great solar eclipse week.