 Life from New York. It's ask an engineer. Hey everybody and welcome to ask engineer. It's me and Lady Aida the engineer with me Mr. Lady Aida on camera control. We're here at the Aida food factory downtown Manhattan broadcasting to you live From New York SNL is coming back, but we're here every single week. You don't have to wait for a season Also, I think I'm funnier than Kate McKinnon. Not really. Okay. We got exciting show for you tonight all sorts of products news updates videos guides and more Really want to tell what's on tight show on tonight's show the code is I spy 10% off a need for store all the way up to 1159 p.m. Eastern time tonight put the code in on checkout and You get a discount during that time talk about it for live series shows including show and tell you a bunch of people on Show and tell time travel look around the world of makers hackers artists engineers big news in the maker world today all sorts of reasons Help wanted jobs from the age for jobs board. You can post your skills or if you're looking for top talent and Everybody is now Check out jobs at 8 fruit dot com. We'll talk about that main New York City factory footage. We got a 3d printing video This is a speed up this week. That's kind of cool We got eye on MPI where we show you the latest new things from digikey and more new products We'll do some top-secret. We'll answer your questions We do that on discord at a fruit dot a slash discord is where we're at You can also go to discord.gg. So say for either one of those will get you there And as of now join all 31,000 of us. We just hit 31,000 people It is the biggest community server for electronics on Discord we'll do all this stuff and more on you guessed it ask an engineer Okay, all right, let's do this thing. Let's do this. So in addition to there being a code 10% off When you order stuff and you can always check out what's available for free just go to a to fruit comm slash free you get 99,000 more you get a free promo proto half-size breadboard. It's our favorite giveaway item 149 and more you get a free stem IQT sensor. We got a whole bunch of different ones still in stock Make it count. We'll send you a different one each time. Otherwise, it's arbitrary and 199 or more you get free UPS ground shipping in the Continental United States. We don't have circuit playground express We will get more in about a month or so Hopefully sooner, but as you may know, there's a silicon shortage So things are taking a little bit longer for us to get to fab more of them But also it's a very popular product. It's a very popular product and yeah We did sell through and gave away a bunch, but we promise we'll bring them back Okay, and then one other note Maybe this is helpful for people who run businesses or thinking about it we've seen the Waves of delays with the postal service. Sometimes it happens during certain times of the year sometimes it Sometimes lots of things happen in the last last year So they announced that they're gonna have a Slower service around the holidays. So we put up a blog post and more so if But as always, you know, we always tell people Give something for a holiday gift Yeah, it's soon especially this year like last year for real, but this year also I mean, we're seeing I'm still seeing the same delays. I'm actually seeing more silicon chip delays like like we're starting to exhaust supply and so You know, I'm doing my best to keep stuff in stock But just because you see something in stock today does not mean it's gonna be in stock in two months It's not getting easier to get stuff and getting stuff shipped around You know, we notice stuff. So mail is a little bit slower a little bit more error rate as far as Getting the wrong mail or packages and then sometimes it disappears and then it reappears later and Has nothing to do with us, but just be aware especially as we approach the holidays My suggestion is we have UPS ground. It's trackable It works gets there it's just 99.99 percent. It's just a challenge and you'll see this across every company, you know company, too It's not just us. Yeah, everyone's doing see freight. You're even more behind Okay, we have a whole series of live shows including this one We just finished up show and tell this week. I wanted to say the highlight or just one of the folks I'm gonna pick out is Michael from Ashwa, yeah, yeah, so it's the open Heart it's open hardware month ohm.ashwa.org and you can check out all the things they have that they're doing this month on the website and Michael talked about Something they're gonna announce soon, which is more open source for FPGA folks So that's a big deal. I didn't hear that in advance. He just he just dropped that Boom not knowledge there. So anyways check out the show and tell on your favorite video platform Two days away from open hardware month. Most people watching on YouTube. So watch our show and tell yes, all right Just gladiator. We do every Sunday. We have two parts. The first one is what are you working on? Okay? What can I work on? Oh, I was talking about packages ships have the same package Because I was actually designing a new board for the BL 53l 1x Distance sensor and it shares the same pinout and shape from the VL 53l 0x But also talked about the DPS 310 matching with the BMP 280 the ADXL 377 matches or 375 matches with a 343 there, you know, I really like it when this happens I think it's it's always a mitzvah if you can get chips that are in the same package and pinout You can reuse the stencil you can reuse the PCB everybody's happier Okay Then we do the great search, which is super handy now because a lot of people are looking for things It's actually just me during the week. So this week, you know, this chip that I really liked It's a plus or minus 100 or 200 g Accelerometer from analog devices got discontinued. I don't know if we're gonna be able to get more I wanted to get another plus or minus 100 or 200 g accelerometer and I I Found the ADXL 374 I think I remember but like I said, it was it's pin compatible with the 343 second even we use A breakout board. So that's kind of cool. Okay, then we have JP's product pick of the week We do this every single Tuesday and we have gigantic discounts we broadcast live from the product page You don't need to put any code or anything. We just do it right there So take it away JP. This is this week's highlight from the product pick. Don't forget every Tuesday We do these The product pick of the week this week is the neomatrix 64 RGBW so here what you're gonna see this is a Rainbow display. That's what we're used to and then I have some stuff in the natural white This one actually this is running my my monitor is making it look a little warmer to me than it is It's more really more of a neutral natural color So there we have some jade color comet or chase and here's a really nice one This is the pulse sparkle You'll see I've got this line right here for some of the colors I'm using RGB underscore white underscore W and that allows me to specify just that white diode Instead of lighting up red green and blue equally, which gives you a kind of color tinted white It's never never a great white compared to this single diode that's in there. It is the neomatrix 64 RGBW Okay tomorrow Thursday, JP is going to be doing John Park's workshop And then I have two little mini videos from JP one just came in right before the show So this is something he's gonna show and then the other one It's the procs tricky. Is that from a guide or is that from him by the way? He did he did a he did a video for the new guide Cat needed the guide and JP contributed. All right. I'm just gonna play these things around and last up We do a segment called circuit Python parsec This is this week's but tune in tomorrow for the latest one here is the one from the latest show what I wanted to show today is how to create a little list of Animated servo positions and control a servo motor using circuit Python So here you can see the basics of it are that I'm importing some libraries time so that I can pause Board for pin definitions PWM that's pulse width modulation Out so that we can send these signals to the servo to tell it what position to go to and then the a fruit motor Servo library, we then set up the servo object and I've called it servo a servo dot servo on my PWM out on Board pin a one is what I've plugged it into on my little feather here at a frequency of 50 Hertz The minimum pulse Duration is 500 maximum pulse is 2375 these are values you can tune to adjust per servo to get things close to zero and 180 degrees Then I'm setting up this list of Animation tuples essentially that contain a position so 090 45. These are all degrees and Time how long I want to dwell on those and this is so we can do some sort of an animation Then we have a little variable called animation pose or position and that's which of those Items in that dictionary are we using and then the main loop of this We set the angle variable and seconds to be that pair of numbers that come from that list We print out the value you can see it printing to my serial port here Then we set the servo to that angle so just jumps to it immediately. I'm not doing anything fancy with easing which I think I will for a future episode and then we pause for that time value in seconds And then we increment using a sort of modulo function to just loop through that list forever and ever so you can see if I Plug in the servo. It's been running this whole time. I just didn't have it plugged in So now I'm going to plug in power ground and that PWM out And now you can see my servo is going to Go between those positions that I have hang out for some Various durations of time. I have it moving faster or slower or holding longer and shorter And then looping so it repeats that motion. So it's a really neat way to set up a repeating Animation so that is how you can set up a list of animation positions on a servo motor inside of circuit python And that is your circuit python parsec, all right and Breaking news scott's going to be traveling so he's not going to be doing deep dive with scott this week So you can watch last week's twice. Yeah, it's great lots of low-level arm v8 Was we pie development embedded Linux at the at the bare metal people was like I want to get the bare metal This is it. You can look at it mess with an NMU trying to get Chip to come up We do it It's intense Time travel All right, there's a bunch of stuff going on first up ate a box will be shipping in October We are going to sell guaranteed. We just Yeah, we have less than 50 openings out of the Thousands and thousands and thousands that we're gonna ship we can't ship anymore There's not enough time when we start shipping to when we need to get them So this will be it for sure. So go to ate a box calm maybe someone could put a link in chat and Sign up if you haven't it's gonna be super fun ate a box is a subscription service You get something every three months and it is For sure gonna be something that you're not gonna be able to get anywhere because there's nothing left true I believe that some of these space billionaires they were distracting us and they took all of our natural resources and ships and left They're all on Mars. That's where all this no no It's like that that's like V and they're they're they're they're reptiles and they eat birds Yeah, all sorts of stuff. You did you did show me a photo of Bezos eating an iguana. So that's true He was he did true. Okay, and that's what we know about. Yeah, all right. So call lob note is every Monday Tuesday Thursday Friday check it out. I picked one. This is the key ghosting one Which I thought was pretty cool. Yeah, this is these videos are very nice motion graphics. Take it away. Go on He ghosting occurs when certain combinations of key presses cause additional unintended presses to be registered You can see how it happens by looking at a keyboard or keypads internal matrix A microcontroller powers a matrix column and determines which key is pressed by reading a matrix rows low or high voltage state Ghosting occurs when the controller checks a row and current flows back up through a neighboring closed key switch and out through another closed switch on a different row Resulting in that incorrect ghostly input But fear not adding diodes to the matrix can stop current from flowing the wrong way through each switch And subsequently busting all those ghosts All right, help wanted jobs at eatford.com is where you can post your skills or You can post the type of person you're looking for for a certain role. Good timing Necklace giant is in chat. Hi necklace right was saying do you have any? Consultation based on feed can can we do that? No, we know we don't but in fact We get that request so much that we decided to make jobs at it for comm so there go there And you will be able to post up what you're looking for put in the raid and all that stuff and should Should be a Way to get the best folks. Yeah this week this week. We are featuring Yeah, and nosies folks and so I featured these jobs. We check all them out this The first one is a senior cloud infrastructure DevOps 100% remote They're they happen to be I think in Florida, but you could do remote senior front-end engineer and This is at laudable full-time 100% remote and of course it's open hardware month So we still have this job featured and they just posted one on their side I'll ask them to post it on our jobs board the open hardware summit chair next up It's On a hundred more time. Okay, so this week our Circuit Python community and discord are Connected we do all that we do a lot of a different stuff, but in general This the discord server that we have for a different Yeah, a lot of its use for developing this you know language real-time over the last few years So we always make a big deal when we hit another milestone and one of the things I noticed if you keep track of things like Folks on your discord server If you measure something and you celebrate it It just seems to make it happen more works up. Yeah, so 31,000 people there happen to be five threes. Sorry four thousand five hundred and thirteen people online right now Thank you so much everyone 31,000 thanks. It's super cool that you're all there and we're gonna continue to keep it one of the best places online You know, I'm starting to notice that other places online aren't as fun inclusive They don't have moderators. There's it's it's it's it's it's it's terrible. Well, it's like that You know, it's like watching the news It's people want attention and they don't get it so they get attention and so I don't know well I think the I think most of online is getting worse right now I think we all there's there's gonna be more tools and people are gonna just be like enough enough But I also know our communities that we we're doing stuff for getting better and I think that's that's the I Think that's a little bit of a challenge at least for me personally Which is we we do such a good job in our eight for communities when you when you start to go and you need to Go elsewhere on the internet. Yeah, it's like. Oh, no. No. Oh, no, this terrible terrible bad And there's just terrible people saying doing it wrong. Yeah saying you're doing it wrong saying you making things too easy I'll talk about that later. But anyways, thank you everybody You know, there's lots of ways to measure Yes, the discord is a nice place. We have a great group of moderators. Yeah, and you can watch along and play along as we Develop Python on hardware together in the circuit Python channels. Anyways, so that's our big news In the newsletter this week whippersnapper official bidder's release. We're gonna talk about that later on in the show Tonight we're gonna play a video and more Soundreactive glasses. We're starting to work on Yeah, I num or numpy thing FFT conversion in micro lab. Yeah and then This is you know starting to see some trends here Or at least they're more visible Lots of Entities out there that are like, oh, we need to do show something with this Raspberry Pi Pico. They're using circuit Python So this one comes from element 14 emulating the Jidron Is there a Python? There's the Halloween hack fest did you key a to fruit hackaday check that out They're giving me posters right now. I have one of the posters. Oh, yeah, maybe you'll get it later And I'll show it but it looks well actually, you know what kind of it looks like this A little different But but similar and then all the rest of the news there was this really interesting Version of circuit Python that helps with willpower and this was just the most too delft thing I've ever seen like having met PhDs from from that, you know, Dutch universities They're really good. They're really hardcore and they always do something like really cool and their demos are awesome So I'm not surprised when I saw this. I was like, yeah, this is like totally their bag and it's always cool to see researchers using circuit Python There's a lot of computer scientists and engineers working on circuit Python We designed it for people who want to do circuit Python as well. Yeah, so Open hardware month your pythons ahead Here is a really neat CO2 and particle per particulate. Sorry air quality Monitor tea pluggy pluggy. Yeah, and this This is really neat now. It's in a pelican case so you can detect air quality and more Just unending circuit Python projects. This is a keyboard that specifically Run circuit Python. So we're getting there and then the last little bit of news it It I think it's interesting and it's more than just Python, but I think it it shows where things are heading So this blue is wireless. They announced a board today. This is called swan. This is they're calling it the most extensive extensible Advanced you name it. It's the it's the best feather compatible microcontroller on the market. So It's kind of cool like Jade Jade tag SWD design there. Yeah, and You know one of the selling features for boards is Works with circuit Python like it's for ML applications and it looks like they didn't design it for their own in-house use with the STM I'm impressed they found the STM. I can't get STM's anymore. The STM 32's are are not around But yeah 120 megahertz with two megabytes of RAM and 640k of flash. That's a good That's a lot actually now two megabytes of RAM. That's a lot. That'd be great for a lot of applications and fly from proof of concept of concept to productions with swan you can see a little circuit Python and Then they put together a really neat video and I guess I'll go to the blog post here. Yeah They're the PR too. Yeah, it's a board. You can see All the different things you can do Yeah, this is really neat and I'm in an open standard that people can use Yeah, and so to me. This is just another Example of if you do something open lots of people can use it and this is why we're saying feather We had nothing to make a power supply there. We're just going. Oh, they're and they have a oh, and by the way, Riaz I don't know if you know him right sort of Something like that a million years ago. I've corresponded with her. Yeah, but one of the neat things is It has a video that came with it. Okay, and I'm gonna show this video Because this is neat to watch people do something they have like a little circuit Python thing Anyways, take it away blues videos and thank you for doing the pull request to add support for this chip and thank you for For making a feather compatible board. It's it's cool And here we go. I watch the video Are your microcontrollers letting you down? Are you tired of bolting on integrated circuits and GPIO port expanders? Just so you can build even the simplest of projects are your print F debugging sessions getting boring leaving you longing for Proper step debugging like real developers have see C++ Arduino circuit Python Can your development team ever agree on anything? Introducing swan one of the most advanced microcontrollers in the universe these beautiful Castilated edges provide access to 64 pins on the integrated STM 32 supporting 20 communication interfaces skip print F join the modern age and step debug this one using VS code and you can copy and paste your code in Any of these languages because swan will run them all plus swan is feather and feather wing compatible So you can sort of new heights with the coolest microcontroller in town. Isn't it time your MCU was as smart as you are Sort of new heights. I feather and circuit Python. I'll I'll buy that for a dollar. I don't know Other like we'll fake ad I mean it's a real ad but it's yeah. Hey, it worked on me worked on me I'm gonna buy this It's open hardware time. So we went over that it is Open hardware month in August Ashwa.org check it out and more. I'm interested in the FPGA stuff that Michael's talking about The other thing I wanted to mention is this is not the first time that open source hardware was in the Wall Street Journal I think the previous times have been the stuff a long time ago. They wrote about Adafruit stuff, but this week. Yes, there is a special Halloween 2021 how to create the ultimate high-tech haunted house and Coming in at number seven And I don't know why there's their numbered, but I guess they just like here's some things eyes without a face the Monster mask from Adafruit is in there and then a cute little illustration that they did and it's really neat to see Stuff in the Wall Street Journal that Adafruit makes so this is a manufactured here in New York Maybe I don't know if they do they do they print it? No, but it's the staff I think they all look it's Wall Street. We used to basically be next door to Wall Street We did originally was like a block away. That's right So another New York company may be showcasing a New York company. They also have the giant Home Depot skeletons I'm kind of waiting for a post Home Depot skeleton life So We also have a bunch of guys we have 2547 yeah, we got this week Okay, so we've got the proximity Trinkie guide from Catney. Thank you for putting that together Arduino and circuit Python code Isaac Walsh put together a cool all-in-one guide for SD cards People are always trying to use SD cards or micro SD your trans flash cards We have a gigantic chart that also looks like an SD card. Yeah, I know Yeah, and this came out because We're looking at different cards for a future like Adafruit camera like a circuit Python camera And we're like well, there's so many cards. I haven't I tried to find like a definitive guide. There wasn't There's like old posts from camera sites from a million years ago that now are like just filled with spam So I'm like, oh, why don't we just we have a learning system Why don't we make a good guide for folks that shows all the different types of SD and micro SD cards and why you would use some specific ones and speeds and stuff. What else we got? Okay, cool We've got the From Melissa a to fur Raspberry Pi rotary encoder I made gift player So it's two ways one is using it's actually any computer can be used for it but it uses a rotary Trinkie and You just plug it into a USB port to make like a large display that just you know when you rotate it It goes through an animated GIF and also a miniature Display with like a pie TFT and just a direct Stem IQ T rotary encoder. So it's like two different ways to make An animated GIF that Increments, you know when you rotate a rotary encoder it goes forward back Jepler took a break from working on camera stuff and knocked out this funnel guide based on Mr. Optimizer's Bluetooth Thermal printer in Arduino code a ported it to circuit Python So now from within circuit Python you can print like really nice high-resolution images to these low-cost thermal printers you can get from Amazon We also have Whipper snapper came out. So we have a guide. It's actually as quick start guide has always been there It's been there for a while, but now it's public and available. So if you want to get started with Whipper snapper It's free for Adafruit IO users. You can have up to two devices and I think up to 10 Sensors connected to them total because you get 10 feeds So check out the quick start guide. We tried to make something Ridiculously easy. You don't have to open up an IDE at all. You don't have to write a line of code To get sensors connected to Adafruit IO and of course Adafruit IO is just MQTT and we have web hooks And we have email hooks and we have all sorts of actions. You can attach To your feeds. So I think this will be a really cool way for people to get sensor data into Adafruit IO And then once it's on the internet, you know, you can stream it to wherever you like Yeah, and we have a video and then I'm gonna go over some selected feedback. Okay already If you've ever wanted to make IOT projects Adafruit IO has a new way to make them easier Welcome to Whipper snapper Adafruit's new platform for snapping together an internet connected electronics project without writing a single line of code This IOT door alarm project took us minutes to build using Whipper snapper It can even notify you when the door has been opened To get started with Whipper snapper you may connect up to two boards to a free Adafruit IO account From the Whipper snapper device panel you can configure and interact with your Internet of Things device Whipper snapper has built-in support for popular Internet of Things platforms such as the ESP 32, ESP 32, S2, SAMD51 and more Whipper snapper lets you connect hardware running the Whipper snapper firmware to the secure Adafruit IO cloud Adding Whipper snapper firmware to your board is simple follow along with the learning system guide to quickly get up and running Once the firmware is installed Whipper snapper will automatically detect and set up your device From the device page, you can start adding components to your device There's a basic set of components to get you started These components should cover most of the common use cases in IOT projects Whipper snapper is still an active development so more components will be added over time Once you've selected your component you can give it a name and map it to a pin on your hardware Whipper snapper automatically knows which pens are available for use for your board So you don't need to spend time looking at his pinout Wi-Fi boards like the mag tag feature built-in Stem of connectors so you can plug in any compatible component like this reed switch To get a free Adafruit IO account and start using Whipper snapper visit IO.adafruit.com slash Whipper snapper We hope this inspires you to try out Whipper snapper and start making IOT projects with Adafruit IO Okay, and then as expected And I have a I have an idea for a marketing campaign advertising campaign now So here's the idea. Okay Adafruit makes Something too easy and the something is electronics IOT You name it whatever good whatever whatever is really hard to do Yeah, I'm trying really hard to make it easy for folks because the Kind of mean people out there are saying that we're making things too easy So I'm always gonna remove the names from now on because I don't want to you know dunk on someone So I remove the name But this is the thing that we hear like a lot and yeah in my inbox because I get the like you know Here's feedback. It's like well you guys are okay, but you're making it too easy And you shouldn't be it should be hard to be terrible. She cut your teeth. She suffer like I did I don't like cutting my teeth. I know that sounds very painful by the way So this is some of the feedback I don't the person didn't couldn't even try it because we post up this video Yeah, except the first bit of feedback and I'll I'll just zoom in and summarize. Yes, basically here it is I can understand the me need to make IOT project is possible to the math masses However, bup-up-up-up. There's almost nothing to learn really yeah, really so this stuff is so hard to do It's impossible. No one's been able to do it. There's only a small Yeah, cuz you know, it's super fun is when you have a product and it creates a Wi-Fi access point and you have to connect your Wi-Fi access point from your phone Which is of course you lose all access to everything so you can't get the instructions because your access points now this device And then you can set the Wi-Fi and then you don't do it right So you have to disconnect and then like now you spent half an hour and nothing's working and you're frustrated Why not just have it work the first time and and I'll say the places and what's starting to happen So like if you show something is easy to do with stuff on Twitter There's just a bunch of people like you should do it the hard way. Why are you doing this? Comments on some sites like oh don't you're you're not doing it. Why don't you use assembly and hardcore? Yeah, you're not not a hack. Yeah, and the thing is really good MIT. Yeah, and so the thing is This stuff is really hard and that's why there's only a small number of people that that that show it that can do it and A lot of folks are like I'm too intimidated to do IOT projects and have this stuff connected What about privacy? What about all this stuff? And so if if you're one of the people who knows about this good for you good for you But we're doing something different and I really think everything we do at Adafruit from now on we really need to say Adafruit makes Something too easy and if we don't hear we're making it too easy. We didn't we didn't we didn't make it easy enough yet and so I Have one other video Brent just made and I think it's the I Squirtsie scanner. Yes, I'm gonna play that too, but anyways I think if you're looking for a metric of success for something that's really important to you to easiness you should You hopefully you'll eventually hear you're making something too easy for someone because that's what you want to do Yeah, you want to make it you want to make it so easy It's not a painful experience right anyways, okay, so I'm gonna play that video So we're working on adding I2C support to Adafruit whippersnapper so the first step is initialization of the I2C bus and scanning the bus and We're doing this with a fun house because the fun house has two I2C sensors already connected to it the DPS 310 and the HT 20 and then through the I2C port I also connected two additional sensors with the stomach cable and If we go to whippersnapper You'll see a new button, which is start I2C scan. So if we click it It finds all four I2C devices connected to the fun house and if we Remove the extra two Externally connected devices click start I2C scan it will show the two devices currently Internally connected to the fun house. So this button Represents a lot of things. It's both a test for us to make sure that the I2C bus is working We can communicate with devices connected to it and it's also utility for people using whippersnapper to double check if the sensors plugged in Which devices are available before they go to new component and configure in I2C component Okay, and as someone just said in the chat making it easy is an invitation to learn something new. I'm just excited See River. I'm just excited that there's gonna be so many people without Decades of technical skills and damage Doing IOT projects. Yeah, like instantly and then of course you'll learn more and do more And then you're gonna want to do things outside of what whippersnapper can do But this is to make it as easy as possible. So anyways full speed ahead We got the first checkbox done which is we made it too easy for someone good So go do something hard. All right, let's do some in your city factory footage It wouldn't be in New York City factory footage without some time lapses. This is the Disney headquarters is being built across street Google just bought a another giant building around here. So Maybe they're gonna build it and you'll see in the background. Yeah, it's growing three four stories up now. Yep, okay Let's do some 3d printing this week. We had speed up okay, and I'm gonna show this speed up. Let me do a little bit of caveat here So we made this feather thing that breaks the headers off So when we film and we have to do stuff we have to show in lots of different things You don't have to go this way or this way with it. You can Stick your fingers in and push down Just FYI we know Have to do this we are aware. Yeah, there's no wrong way to do it if it's helping you out But anyways, sometimes when we film stuff, we have to show how the thing works. So anyways take it away. No, I'm Pedro Get every single Wednesday 3d hangouts and no Pedro Let's um, I'm gonna just read one other thing that just came into the chat because this is a theme I think we can do this This whole idea of keeping people out because we made things too hard that has to end So this is a neat this is a neat thing This person says I have a PhD in computer science and I think accessibility to technology important about a decade ago I said electronics was no longer fun because it was too hard like yeah It was like really hard I remember when we started make magazine it was it was so difficult and things slowly started to get better And now like this is the best time to do anything with electronics Yeah, and and iot stuff provided like I think if you take a look at our stuff first is to get started Because it was so hard to do and it was expensive and it was scary and if you went to online forums, they chased you away Literally, okay, let's Do All right this week I am PI is from pocket pocket Pocket they make the pocket. No, it's the pocket meter because well, I guess you could poke things with it But it's it fits in your pocket So I saw this on the cheeky comm slash me when I always love cute adorable things I may sucker for things that fit into your pocket, so they make a multimeter They did I think a crowdfunding campaign, but now they're I think this is the second or third generation of product This is the pocket meter and it's like a key chain shaped size multimeter and it's cut Um, you know their thing that I think is adorable is the the leads come out like, you know Yeah, we start like ethernet cords or whatever that or like little phone cords that would come on a one of these spools And you could pull the the cables out so it does that and so it's nice as you don't have that like kind of wound up Bundle of cables. It actually does kind of like all slip into the body of this little, you know large Keychain size thing actually, let's go to the overhead now because I'll show I'll show that I will say by the way I took this apart because I want to see what chip was used in it so This doesn't work quite as well anymore the thing but believe me it normally works quite well I just like the spring I kind of like a little metal piece came out of most of you are not going to take these apart like we do Yeah, I took it apart So there's a coin battery here CR 2030, which is replaceable. What chip is that? It's the EFM. It's a Silabs EFM 32 BF3. I think it's a Bluetooth 32 bit Cortex from Silabs But these are the little probes and so you can even you know, you grab them and you can probe things It also does come with Some nice grabby micro grabbers so this would See this I think plugs into here quite nicely and so now you can have a yeah kind of a micro grabber But this is optional. It you know comes in a case also if you like, but Let's see if this works. Well, you know, I remember when you showed this to me before I was like Oh, is there like a screen and you said there's an app. So this is basically like a little It's almost like an air tag But it's a multimeter Yeah, and if you don't and if you don't break the spring when you press the button the zips back quite nicely So I work a little bit, but anyways, I'll show a demo in a moment anyway So let's go back to the the computer This is what it looks like. So now you see you pulled the leads out and it's battery powered It doesn't have a screen because you're supposed to use your phone So you download for your phone or your tablet. There's Android or iOS apps and it actually paired very nicely And you don't do anything special. You just it just kind of is advertising and you can pair to it give you little tips and hints on how to use it and then You go straight into the modes and so I note that because it's portrait mode the top and bottom It's two different screenshots. So at the top you can see there's a multimeter a oscilloscope and longer mode And then at the bottom is the oscilloscope mode where you you type it to acquire data So the multimeter mode I will say is Instantaneous the oscilloscope mode is not and I'll show that in a little bit Two things is that you're like, well, okay, so there's a non-rechargeable coin cell battery Well, how do you know when the battery is about to die? It'll actually warn you it'll say battery low When you open up the app if the battery is getting low, how long is it less than a battery? I don't know, you know, probably a couple dozen hours There's no on-off switch that I can note I think it actually, you know auto-offs. I guess when it doesn't get data or from the The app on your phone or tablet I Didn't notice either way, you know, we're like any way to turn it off I just quit the app and it seemed to not work and then when I open the app again It it worked again. So it's magical that said the Silabs EFM series is pretty low power Second there is a multiple mode. You can see on the side or you know resistance and continuity and voltage and all that good stuff And you might be also wondering well like you know current mode is kind of weird It does come with a fuse. There's a warning when you go into current mode So you know you have to kind of double you have to click and then click another thing because with current mode It's very easy to blow the internal fuse. There's a two amp fuse inside So I like that it gave you a warning. I like that they tell you when the battery is low Next step, okay, multimeter like plain mode. So this is kind of what it's most useful for It can do temperature resistance AC current DC current, I think the limit is I think 60 volts DC and then for AC I think it's like 40 volts or so There's diode check. There's continuity and the beep comes from your phone, of course, and there's no speaker in the device You know for for doing basic voltage measurements, it's instantaneous, right? Which is which is really nice or continuity check or resistance checking you get instantaneous Feedback, so it's really it's really good for that purpose. So maybe I'll try to do a live demo So the thing that you know, I'm always interested in this is okay. It says it's an oscilloscope. So is it an oscilloscope? Yes, it technically it is I will warn that it is not a live streaming oscilloscope, right? So it's more kind of like a data logger that can like trigger and then send chunks of data to your phone So what you have to do is you have to press that red thing and it will sample data for you and then Transmit it all back and then you can look at it and kind of zoom in and out It doesn't do what you would normally, you know what normal people think of is an oscilloscope Or it's kind of like continuous trigger mode, you know, I still think it's very useful I just want people to know that you know, you can do analog You can do you know digital and this is me sampling an audio signal. It's perfectly useful, but it is not Instant trigger rolling trigger. It's it's data capture. So maybe I'll go quickly to the yeah Yeah, let's do a little show where it's out on the digikey site. Okay. Let's try this a live demo the It's a little risky the iron PI segment as part you by digikey and Adafruit. Okay, so No might want to Okay, so it says, you know connect to the device and it blinks blue And then you go into this mode So for example continuity mode, that's an easy one to test So you can remove the leaves and then again, it doesn't normally do that, but I broke it And then Oh wait, sorry, that's diode so very annoying, but let's say I want to do Temperature so temperature temperature reading and then let's do voltage and then I will Use handy just to keep in your toolbox or your bag if you have a phone Yeah, because you never know when you're gonna do it is a true pocket meter, you know, which is which is unique So let's measure this battery into here So this battery is 3.66 volts, so that's kind of nice I can measure Another nice thing is because it's battery powered, you know, it's a floating voltage This is Three volts, you know measuring the voltage on this le lcd. So all that stuff is is pretty good and then If you go to the oscilloscope mode, you know if you capture data You know, I'm not gonna see anything because I don't have it connected Well, maybe I can go cut together and then I'll Get ground data So yeah, you acquire data and then it displays it Maybe you can tap the No, I tap can you tap the To do two things at once right try now, that's weird. Oh, you know what I think I have to There you go. All right, hold on. Let's try it now Yes, you can see that there's some signal here. Yeah, that I'm getting so I don't know what it is exactly, but it's like some some power supply signal So, you know, you're you're not gonna get constant streaming data I think eventually it would be nice if that was something that was added I know it's tough to do but maybe with BLE5 and maybe if it's like Pre-triggering and there's enough RAM on the device. I think that that's the only thing that didn't make it like Oh my god, this is the most amazing ever But it's still very useful And it it does fit in your pocket. It's fit in your purse and it does fit on your key chain So for that a hundred bucks, it's a pretty good deal and it's in stock and did you key available in stock You can get it on did you key. There's a short URL on the screen. Yeah, I'm definitely gonna keep this for sure Yeah, and then there is the Part number that you can search and we have a little bit of a short video Yes, and we're going to play it and we'll get to new products for this. Okay Electronics are an integral part of our everyday lives Now there is finally a powerful measurement device that you can have with you anytime anywhere Pocket meter is the world's smallest wireless multimeter the oscilloscope and logger With retractable leads and Bluetooth connectivity to your smart device Pocket meter is the ideal device for measuring on the go Pocket meter is compact enough to store anyway, so it is there for you at a moment's notice It harnesses the power of your mobile device and displays accurate waveforms and data that can be saved and exported Pocket meter can be used by anyone electricians hobbyists and engineers Connect up to four pocket devices to the pocket app so you can take multiple readings simultaneously Pocket meter is also ideal for students The ability to have a multimeter the oscilloscope and logger all in the one device means that you can easily take measurements at school University and from home pocket meter measurement unleashed and that is this week's IonMPI Okay, before we go to new products don't forget loads up in your cart, but you want to use this code on the way out and Also get a bunch of free stuff. Don't forget all the free things lots of zooming in and zooming out Okay, first up we have Some cables Yeah, you actually wanted us to carry some USB extension cables because you were like this thing isn't far enough away because you have a USB Thing over here and you want over there, so you have two lengths of it's really very plain It's a USB extension cable, but like when you need one you really want one I like how slim and straightforward these are They're good quality. They have all the pins connected through both ways So, you know, I reverse it one meter and two meter All right next up next up we have a 18-pin FPC cable. I got these because we're actually gonna be doing some more stuff with iSpy Which is why the code is iSpy So these cables would be useful for our boards that are coming out again There's a silicon and TFT shortage the cables came before the rest of the parts did But I can just show on the overhead This is actually using a DF robot board because they have a connector that I'm I'm dubbing iSpy I don't know if they have a name for for their connector. It's a feather shape board It looks like it's a very feather shape board. It's not quite feather and iSpy is not quite compatible with their thing either but this is You know iSpy's is this SPI connector that we're gonna put on our TFT displays And then when you have a board that has the same FPC connector you can match them up and now you have a You know remotely connectable display without all that wiring that normally you have to do with all the header pins And so we have this in both 100 millimeter and 200 millimeter Flex cable and they in there's some metrics. It's kind of nice. You can use either way okay, and then next up the star of the show besides you lady Eda and All of a to fruit team the community the customers everyone in chat tonight is Yay a t tiny 8 1 7 breakout okay, so this is a kind of an interest. It's a 3-in-1 board really so first up it's a Development platform for the a t tiny 8 1 7 it says 8x 7 because one day I might have a different chip But it's the 8 1 7 on there right now, which is the kind of the second or third gen AVR chips from microchips so you know people know the Atmega 328 you know famous with the atmega 8 original chip one of the original chips or the at tiny 85 well You know there was a kind of a revision to that silicon to come up with the like a teeny AVR mega AVR series I don't know exactly that the name of them, but it's kind of a redo a lot of it is Very compatible, but they've added some more hardware functionality like for example a capacitive touch natively and single wire debug and Some good peripherals. I like the peripherals are a little bit more Flexible as well More pinmuxing capabilities for all the all the peripherals like this has two I scored seaports right which normally you would not get on a 50 cent part But more importantly, you know the originally we were using the sam-do 9 for a lot of our seesaw and and stomach qt boards Sammy of O 9 is getting quite hard to get and I don't know if I'm going to be able to get a lot of them for the next year And so I thought let's revise our boards instead of using the three volt sam-do 9 Cortex M zero The 80 tiny 8 1 7 is a quite powerful board. It's 20 megahertz. It's got 8k a flash I think a half k a ram a little bit of e-prom e-prom is quite nice And it runs from three or five volts just kind of sweet as a lot of bunch of peripherals It's very inexpensive So this is a dev board to help me use that chip and other nice thing lots of analog digital converter pens a lot of PWM Pans more than the sam-dee the sam-dee I think only had four analog digital inputs I Think muxt into the ADC and this one has like nine And it's got a lot of PWMs, too. So it's got like a lot more flexibility. I think on the pinout Second it is a seesaw development board So we're gonna we're shipping this with seesaw, which is our I squared C to whatever protocol So you can do PWM and analog inputs. It doesn't have a DAC It does have a neopixel driver, which I'll show the demo for like I said PWM outputs You can access the e-prom you can change the I squared C address But what it's really useful for is, you know, a lot of times you're like I want to connect like a rotary encoder to I squared C or I want to catch a rotary encoder to something and that's something that requires ordering coder or neopixels requires timing Specific data that you really want to sub-processor it out And so this is our kind of our sub-processor coprocessor helper that runs over I squared C and In addition, it's also got stem and QT Connectors on each end so you can use it as an I squared C breakout You can use it if you want basically a chip that can control a lot of GPIO and neopixels and PWMs This board will do the trick. So let's do a demo. Let's do a demo. This is real So here I've got it connected up to a a QT PI board or one of our Easy to use because it's got a stomach QT connector. So it's just I squared C power ground did a clock And it's going to that board and this is actually, you know, again, this is right out of the box This is the firmware comes with it You can wire it up to neopixels on any pin that can control up to 60 neopixels And then over here, this is sending I squared C commands to here to drive the neopixels. So QT PI obviously could drive neopixels on its own But what if this was a raspberry PI or it can be a computer and you have a USB to I squared C adapter or it can be You know a onion pie or whatever something that can't drive neopixels or or doesn't want to you want to off load all that bit banging stuff to a coprocessor and This boards a couple bucks and takes commands of I squared C and does all that work for you It can also do ordering coders and PWM and analog inputs. So all these things that are Hard for embedded Linux or computer or some microcontrollers to do You can now offload it. So very similar to our sam-do9 board, but now with the 80 tiny 817 We'll probably also do an 8x6 board as well The 817 is quite nice because not only does it have all these GPIO and one wire program debug using UPDI, but Also as an internal oscillator so you can change the speed Again, it can do three or five volts unlike the sam-do9 And it has Harbor multiply. So I have some ideas for audio input as well Okay, and that is this week's new products Okay, well, don't forget this is code use that if you want to get anything we haven't talked We're gonna do questions. We do that over on discord both of the questions now join us and While we're showing some top-secret load up some questions. So here we go top secret. I have one top secret this week But it's okay This week top-secret lady. What are you working on? Oh, I was working on that ADXL 377 We're play spent and while I was there. I was like, you know what let's revise all our ADXL I squared C or SPI Bores and so I made a step at UT board. I did not get to a lot of hardware this week. It was jam-packed. Okay That's our top secret All right, I will Help out with some of these questions. Mm-hmm. So here we go. Let's do Let's do questions. Sure. Can you do a couple questions and get out of here? Yeah Okay, first up Any TA on the SCS CD 41 true CO2 temperature? There is a silicon shortage Yeah, I have no controller idea when I'm ever gonna get sensors again. Yeah, you get it You get to if it's in stock buy it. Yeah, I don't know what I'm getting more. Okay Any ETA on the Metro M7 with airlift feet Yeah, next year we're not getting there's some parts I can't get for two years Okay, these wonderful small round tactile buttons are on the feather OLED 128 by 64 other boards What are they? I've been looking all over attaching pictures. So it's these those are KMR twos. Okay Okay, it's also in schematic next up this person is in Japan shipping is about 30 bucks. Yep, it'll probably cost about that Because the plane has to bring it there Is there any way to make it order or ship everything at stock so Yeah, we don't especially so we don't do back orders because or reserve stock as you can see right now Imagine if we did there'd be one thing always out of so here's my suggestion There are some of our resellers that do back that do back orders Maybe check did you key? Yeah, they could do that and and you can place an order I'm noticing a lot of websites aren't doing any type of back work Yes websites that you do back orders have taken away that capability and so We've always we've always decided whatever you place an order on ETA for it ships. Yes. It's in stock We physically own it and during a shortage here if something is not going to be in stock for a year you don't want To hold on to someone's order or that you know the pending credit card charge, which eventually expires. Anyways, yeah, so I hear you Is what it is But I would I would check out resellers also switch science in japan Carries a lot of our stuff. Yeah as the distributor to stock more stuff And they could stock quite a bit and they order lots of things all throughout the year And they pay one big shipping charge. Okay, and I think I got that Let's see Yeah, this isn't this isn't a question. This is more like yeah It says yeah, the haters say you guys make electronics too easy You're definitely not looking at from the right perspective So that's a great example from what I see you guys are learning how to do stuff Then you teach us to do the thing and you make it better for all of uh for Better and all learn stuff together. It's so nice. Yeah Yeah, go figure Yeah, a lot of things that when you buy ETA for your hardware You're paying for maybe months of us going through every possible error mistake Thing that needs to be documented shown with it and then you're getting the thing it just just works And I think that's one of the things I've seen some electronic companies are like, well, we'll just put out the hardware in the community You'll figure it out and that doesn't ever work or they'll say well the code the code's on github But there's no information. There's no documentation and there's no one actually who's Will fix it or do any stuff. So anyways, I think this is all related. Okay, next up question the Breaking the metal pin header strips is easy But what's the best approach to break female pin header strips? Oh pull out the pin Right where you wanted to be cut and then cut through that pin Where the metal was so you pull you yank out the metal pin and then you cut through it Okay, um, would we ever stock those k-mart two switches in the shop? Nope, get them didgy you can buy them any corner you want. Okay All right, let me see what else we get going here Um, folks seem to like the new chip. Yay Someone says you're curating the confusion out of the process leaving the fun That's a good phrase That's a good phrase everybody everybody's been on this Tonight. Good metaphor. You know what here? I was saying this in our we have a pre-meeting before our Like with our team. Yeah A video meeting. Yes, and then we have a little bit of time like 20 minutes and show and tell Yeah, and then we do ask an engineer and I was saying I I really think that There is solutions to this where there's this like gatekeeper world in tech But and I could fix it. It's just gruesome. Yeah, and no one's gonna know Well To get to that it'll be it'll be pretty gruesome because I I do think you have to tell people stop doing that. Yeah, and um Yeah, we can continue to have our community and grow it, but I really think some of these folks that are Um, telling people they're doing it wrong and they're being mean and they're making it so people don't want to share their stuff online I saw I said this to our team. There was this article It was about why women leave twitter because they share something That they've built or made or done and then they're just like whoa got to get out of here I actually like the article because it was so it was so not like I don't say grotesque, but it's sort of like watching It's like watching somebody debone an animal They're like, oh twitter like the in other social media not just social twitter and also just american culture We really like to build people up To tear them down like it is our it is our national holiday Like I think the british loves second chances the british do it better than us by the way Like they're really good at it, but um, we're close second. Yeah. Oh here we go Sorry, I did miss one uh audio project. I want to use A microcontroller temporary mute a headphone level signal single level single for say 15 seconds And then resume it on its own with code Can you just wire one of the headphone wires to microcontroller and toggle high low to turn off the headphone signal Any components needed besides, uh, Arduino boards of your choice or whatever. How would you do that? So this is actually extremely hard. Um Because you don't want to have anything in the path of the audio signal So like a relay would work, but then you have a floating signal So I mean you could and you know, you're gonna have a pop The right thing to do is to get a chip There's probably chips or boards out there that are our audio path switchers and you switch You would literally switch the audio path out, but you would have to You would have to get a dev board something that does this specific thing Because it's it's an analog mux problem. You can't put a digital chip in the way Not not easy and the signal level is low and yours are incredibly sensitive to noise Um, it's not easy. I would try to find a ready to go solution to do it Yeah Okay, and I think we got through All of the uh questions and I'll say this Thank you everyone who participated in talking about like this future that we could get to where Things are easier and we don't have to even remake some stuff over and over and over again The tar whipper snapper. Yeah, one free one thing that I heard from First robotics folks is a lot of the the younger folks and there these things are changing with this But a lot of the younger folks they end up Building a robot and they're building kind of the same things everyone built over and over and by the The time they have the time they have to work on these things are so limited And you know a different approach is you know what? For for the younger folks that are just get started. Why don't we have a robot platform where they're focusing on the code because Making a power supply That works with a robot is really hard. No, I mean I I took six Six two seventy and it's It really turned me off to robotics for life. It's just it's so traumatic But I think that that's one example where there's so many things That are that are going on with the design That if you were to try to design a robot from scratch, you're looking at servos. You're looking at Motors, you're looking at wiring. You're looking at mechanical stuff. You're looking at Eventually you get the code battery which battery how long does it last? How does it charge? Just catch on fire, you know all these things and These kids don't have as much time and if you don't have something for them to do for some type of accomplishment To build off of that we lose them And I feel like that's one of the things too Like if you can make something so easy that you you make some progress right away, even if it's just something basic Yeah, that's the way to go Because I think there's a lot of other things people can do. Yeah, they can they can watch like disney plus They could do other stuff besides like oh like I have to learn this thing That's the competition. It should be fun. And I think fun is like a sense of accomplishment and momentum. Yeah And uh, we're missing that in in electronics and tech Not even for itself We're working on we're working on it forward march But but I think we can all have a louder voice with that and maybe That'll uh, that'll help out We'd have in addition to like the the question we have to have an exclamation point Oh, yeah, when you're when you're making a point Yeah, well We'll see anyways. Okay. Thanks everybody. That is our show for tonight Thanks for another great week everybody. It was good to hang out chat. You can listen to our We'll see everybody next week. Uh, especially thanks to the car behind the scenes. Thanks, Cara At Adafruit. Thank you everyone in the chat tonight. Um great questions and comments and Everyone coming together and doing stuff. Thank you community. Thank you. Thank you so much everybody because uh, I you know The rest of the day don't I don't get to do this. This is no, you know other parts of the day is hard But we'll see everybody uh during the week. We have some more shows ahead Lots of cool stuff to stay tuned to the website stay tuned to our social media stay tuned to all the stuff Here is your moment of zener