 It's me John Park and it is time for this week's episode of JP's product pick of the week Thank you so much for stopping by We have a great show Planned for you here today really cool product pick if you're new to this show what happens Well, I show you a cool product that we have in this case a brand new one a fairly brand new one And I give you a humongous discount on it if you want to head over to the shop And get one you don't need a coupon code or anything like that You can simply head to that url right there point your camera at that qr code That'll take you right to the product page for this week's product pick and there it will be discounted 50% off of the usual and we have a bunch of them Stashed in stock and ready to go that we popped into the store right before the show So that's how this works now Before I go any further with this what I'd like to do is actually have Lady Ada We'll just jump back a little bit in time have Lady Ada introduce this to you. So please take it away Lady Ada Yay, it's the NXP Digi-Key Ada food collab that we started in late late 2019 finally here in the shop we've got a Metro shape board with the IMX RT 1011 we have an existing board that's very similar that's Wi-Fi. This one has micro SD So it's very affordable. So it's under 20 bucks and you get a 500 megahertz IMX NXP processor This is a Cortex M7. This is like an incredibly powerful chip and it's less expensive than many AVR 8-bit micro controller boards Like the silkscreen design. Yeah, the silkscreen is very beautiful. Thanks to Philby for it It's got a micro SD card slot so you can use it for data storage or retrieval USB type-c has native USB. You can power it from a DC jack Again, it's very powerful 500 megahertz processor with 120 kilobytes of RAM and for storage Both disk storage internal disk storage and firmware storage eight megabytes of Q-Spy flash So it's very speedy so great for data logging or if you want to Stream data off of the micro SD and process it very quickly Because we don't have anything fast in the Cortex M7 for micro controller a lot of accessories on it as well and not just you've got all of the Arduino compatible headers so you can use shields with it Static UT port as well Neopixel built-in that micro SD card on-off switch a JTAG SWD port So if you want to do step debugging you can connect this up to your J-Link And use it with MCU Expresso, which is an ex pieced ID You can do step debugging with their programming system I will mention though even though it is Arduino shaped It does not actually run the Arduino ID Instead we have circuit Python support, which I think is great because you can get up and running really fast and we support I2s and SD card reading and your digital in-out PWM Analog all the stuff you expect Or you can use nxp's IDE, which of course is going to be the most powerful and they've got IDE with tech support and all of the arm Cortex Simpsys core required to use all the peripherals on the M7 So you want to get started really quickly go with circuit Python You want like power and control over every register and every byte and all the caches Use nxp's tools But either way this is the partnership that we're doing because we wanted to show people that even though this is a 500 Networks processor we can make it as easy to use as an 8-bit microcontroller All right, and somewhat collectible war two. I think this might be the first circuit board with the new digi-key logo Yes, that is true. So here look that's that's it right there. Oh nice logos Soak screen That right there is the product pick of the week this week. It is the Metro M7 micro SD This uses the nxp IMX RT 10 11 chip on it, which is incredibly fast. It runs at 500 megahertz and There are all kinds of great features on this you've got eight megabytes of Q spy on there So a lot of storage space. We have a what is it a hundred and nine? Let me check my stats here a 128 128k of SRAM on there Things I like about this board. First of all, it is Arduino shaped which means all of those shields that you have that you can plug in motor driving shields and audio shields and Proto shields the plug right in there, which gives you a lot of space to work with to add your own circuits and connections to other things It's usb-c right huge improvement over the old usb-b Printer cable sized thing that you'd have in a original Arduino We also have on there one second. I got a pause a pause a feedback video. That's going to drive me bonkers Also on there. We have the stem aqt port. Where is it? It's right there So if you want to plug in little stem aqt accessories, that's going to do it for you In fact, let me go to back to this overhead view So you can see it right here. Okay, so stem aqt port usb-c port there is that micro sd card readers You can click in a little micro sd card read data off of there read assets off of there right to their data log onto there That'll work really nicely for that We also have these little switches here. You might be wondering what these mysterious switches This allows you to actually toggle between the pin ordering for tx rx to be 0 and 1 or 1 and 0 So one is the traditional and the other allows you to use sequential pins for digital just in case so neat nifty feature there reset button right here all of the same Arduino pin spacing that you'll need to use your shields and Take a look on the back. You actually get some of the stats right there, right? I couldn't remember Okay, so there it is nx p i mx rt 1011 the 500 megahertz 128k of ram and 8 megabytes of q-spy flash And of course the micro sd card slot it is partnership with Adafruit and nx p and digi key So they've got their labels their logos rather on the board there and One of the key things about this is it's just plain fast So if you're looking for a board that you can run circuit python on it for ease of use And you want it to be as fast as can be this is probably the board for you In fact, I want to show you a demo here. So I've got Here's another one right here a metro m7 sd card slot and I have plugged into it the tft Shield so you can see that's plugged in right there slots in to all the lovely slots and on in here I've got a nice little bouncing ball demo. This is kind of like a hyper fast version of the Amiga CG graphics ball demo. This was a demo a modified based on something Todd Kurt Todd bot had created And you can see this thing is just running plain fast So if you're looking to do some graphics things and you just need cycles You need the thing to to run it as quick as can be if you're doing synth. I oh in fact someone in the discord was just saying it was easy Gavin saying I'm really enjoying the Metro m7 the other version of it that has the the Wi-Fi on it using it with synth. I oh, so this is a great choice for using with synth IO it has a DC power jack on it if you're not used to these style boards One of the features here is you can plug in anywhere. I think from 6 to 12 volts DC with your typical barrel jack Connector trying to give her that glare there we go So if you want to plug in a Double a battery pack to it if you want to get away for a very short time with just a 9 volt battery It won't last long, but it'll work or more likely you're gonna plug it into a wall wart and give yourself plenty of power to work with Let's see other features That covers the main stuff so like lady has said no Arduino support on this ironically I know it's Arduino shaped, but there's not really Arduino support for this, but we have circuit Python for great ease of use and you can use NXP's IDE to code in C and C plus plus if you're looking for really high speed Development on there that's that's probably the way to go This chip by the way is the same chip you'll find in the teen C4 So if you're if you're thinking hmm, that's that's pretty familiar What's the deal with this NX NXP chip? Why have I heard of it before it is the one that is on the PGRC? teen C4 So if you Want to head over to the product page right there you will see it is Just during this show half off So throw them in your cart and buy them now because after the show will bring the price back up an incredible deal Right, so if you're asking why do we have the Metro M7 with Wi-Fi and then this Metro M7 with SD card Why would I want this this one is the really low-cost version? I don't know if you can enter into this kind of speed and M7 500 megahertz chip cheaper than the The price that we normally have on this 1995 and then right now during the show. It's a absolutely outrageous nine dollars 98 cents You can scroll down here and you will see some of the specifications on here the One thing I didn't mention this has an on off switch on it So if you are running from the DC jack or the V in you can turn it on and off just with a flip of a switch Which is really nice means you don't have to add more complexity to your project if you just need to turn the thing on and off if you keep scrolling down You will find the link to the primary guide. I've got it up right here This will tell you all of the main features It has a really lovely pinout page that will tell you how all the pins can be used if you click on this Chart here you can zoom way in on it and you can see any of these pins can be used for a lot of different uses You can PWM on them. You can use them some of these as analog as digital As I square C and on and on so check this out if you're curious about the features It's a lot of GPIO available right there on the chip or rather on the board And if you take a look here We have a section on getting set up with circuit Python and some essentials installing the bootloader as well as downloads page if you want to get the schematics for it the CAD files as well as technical reference and the datasheet for this chip from NXP if you have any questions about that Um Pete Karina hurry says hey, how about ornament and crime as an Arduino shield? Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, I believe that The teensy four will be able to run the very popular euro rack firmware called ornament and crime Soon if not already Paul from PGRC has been working to make that happen since the teensy three point twos disappeared from the face of the Planet so may have maybe maybe that'll run on this that could be pretty wild So There is A nice little product shot from this one take a closer look at that what we have on the board and Let's see. Do we have questions in the chat? Looking good Yeah, the discount wasn't there at first but a couple minutes into the show if you hit refresh it It should have shown up for you at the good price of nine dollars ninety-eight cents It's amazing if you think back to original Arduino days do a milanova diecimile the uno The things this board can do for the kind of price that it is a bit astonishing What else I think that covers it. Yeah, so let me let me go back to the overhead here and I'll just show you Attaching the shield here, so I'm gonna go ahead and unplug From USB let me try to keep my USB cable from sliding off of the desk there so I'll carefully pull this out and you can see we have the SPI port broken out on these little six pins here, so if your Shield takes advantage of SPI you can use those pins right there And if you look here, I've got A little SD card that I can store graphics files on there and pull them into into code into memory and Then pop the shield Right on like that. Look how quick this thing powers up And we're up and running. Oh, it doesn't restart. I'm not sure why my computer being funny I think if you take a look at the code that I've got running on here Over in circuit Python This is like I said my modified version of Todd bot's screensaver if you look on Todd's github for screensaver you've got a few Different bits of code there to use I just put it all into this one file instead of the generalized library that he had but you can see we've got a 320-240 display on here and it's running pretty high frame rates if you take a look at Just the ball here. I'm gonna resave the code watch how quickly this thing restarts and just the ball on there I know lady Ada had a demo doing some bouncing DVD logos And that I think she got six or eight of them all flying around at once So we could probably start adding a lot of sprites to this and it would it would continue to run Just because we have that kind of Processing power on this on this board right here So that is it right there. I Think unless there's any other questions This will This will do it for the show people making me laugh over in the discord Todd wants to know what's the biggest fort I can build with a palette of these At this discounted price your fort is going to be ten Metros in size because that's the limit, but if you want to buy them at the regular price You can go pretty much full-scale full-scale fort Alright McQuin man 16 does that work with the VS 1053 MP3 shield by G tech. I do not know That is a great question, but I don't know the answer to that one. Sorry Frame rate yeah, this might be 60 frames a second that this is running out. I didn't I didn't run the calculation I think it was let me see 0.01 Refresh was that was running at 20 to 24 frames a second on the fun house is what taught in calculating That's a different that was a different size display. I've got this frame delay at 0 0 2 You can see here actually me just since someone asked if we go back here and Let's see that was running it that was 20. What is it? Yeah, 20 24 frames a second at that and so I'm I can go Quite a bit faster here. Oh Oh Didn't like that change restart it. I can't tell I don't know It's high frame rate. You'd probably have to do more math or Get a high frame rate camera on there to figure that out. I'm not sure we can do fun stuff since I'm in the dangerous Unscripted what do we want to do here part of the demo? We can change the sprite scale So slow it down because moving a lot more pixels, but we can go much bigger now It looks like the Amiga demo you can see the thing rotating on there Let's see if it speeds up if I change this Oh, no, that's already that's already had a high frame rate Yeah, the more pixels you change on these displays that you're just gonna slow things down, but We can head back to Regular original scale so now we're not having to like frame double the thing and it's just bouncing around there fast All right, I think that's gonna do it then so Thanks everyone for stopping by That is my product pick of the week this week. It is the Metro M7 micro SD with NXP IMX RT 1011 chip for Adafruit Industries, I'm John Park and this has been JP's product pick of the week Make sure you go to the store and get some before they're all gone And before the price goes up in a few minutes if you want to get some get them now All right. Thanks everyone for stopping by. I will see you on Wednesday tomorrow evening and be hosting show and tell so hopefully you can come by There will not be a Thursday workshop show because that's Thanksgiving and I'll be eating turkey. Thanks everyone See you next time. Bye. Bye