 Welcome to the show. It's me JP. I got excited about the song today song rocks What's happening? Hey welcome. It's time for JP's product pick of the week right here in my workshop It is Tuesday. That's where we are. It's one o'clock eastern time. No, it's one o'clock Pacific time four o'clock Eastern time. That's when this happens And hello, hello, hello to the people over in our chat Hey Jim and Jim Hennickson Mike P thin man see Grover. Glad to see you We've got people over in our YouTube chat as well tackle the world David S. Charles Burner for Jeff Hunt Bill Ferguson is this YouTube? Yes Batagraph of Delhagen. Hello, and thank you for stopping by if you're wondering Where the chat is if you're over somewhere in Twitch land or LinkedIn learning or periscope if that still exists Vimeo Do they do live anyway? The chat is actually happening over on our discord so go over to adafru.it slash Discord look for our live broadcast channel live broadcast chat channel. I should say it looks Like that. That's it right there. In fact. Hey blitz city DIY. Hey Exclamation point evolt now we I want Love exclamation point. I'm gonna guess is your handle backwards. Hi Be the dude creative. I Derek Treywick over in our YouTube. Hello So What's happening here today? I've got a cool new product pick if you want to jump over to the product page for the product pick And take a look Sneak peek. That's the product ID right there 4481. That's all you need to know But you can use that URL. You can use that QR code. Those will all get you there Adafru.it slash 4481 will get you there. That's our little sort of URL L shorten her Hey, Todd bot also just joined our chat Head over there because this show is happening inside of that product page And we're excited about that that you can watch us right in there You can read the copy. You can click the links. You can throw some in your cart for a Tremendous discount. It's a great deal. It's 50% off today for this mysterious product that I'm teasing But before I get specific about it, I'm gonna let Lady Aida get specific about it. How about that? It's the itsy-bitsy nr 52 840 So the itsy-bitsy is is this kind of form factor that we like using it to go 0.7 inch by 1.4 inch size and It has a micro USB and one end and then it has a whole bunch of stuff inside that makes it easy to use with Our Arduino or circuit Python in this case. It's an nr 52 840. It's a USB Capable Bluetooth le radio module which just about the module just got FCC see italic certification everything and then It's kind of big so we had to use the bottom so it doesn't sit flat like the other itsy-bitsies But it has two megabytes of SPI Q spy flash has a dot star RGB LED. It has a 32 kilohertz crystal. It has like power regulators and stuff And it has nearly identical pin out to the other itsy-bitsies the biggest difference is of course There's no pins on the end usually there's like another extra five pins where that antenna is But then ten is there and even if we know we did move the module over you wouldn't want those pins You know that much metal near the antenna And so we just kind of pushed at the end and then you have all the connectors that you need along the sides including Pin five which is a special pin. It's level shifted up to five volts So it's an output only that means though that you can use it for driving a neopixels directly Or if you ever need something that needs five volt power logic You can use that pin for that. So this is great for very compact Bluetooth projects are smallest VLA module It's the teensies one yet, and it's got two buttons one for Bulloader and reset and then we have an extra LED for a user switch Why put it there? I don't actually remember why but at the time it seems like a good Actually, I was thinking like why did I put it there? But you have an extra switch so maybe if you want to you know some people are using this for keyboards Maybe you switch modes or whatever it has a little you know button on it. So it's very small Compact but once circuit Python beautifully once Arduino beautifully you can use it with all our recent Circuit Python library work and of course all the historic Arduino libraries that we've written over the years Yes, yes indeed it is Where to go? Hey, look, that's it right there Dun-dun-dun shake that out of the little ESD safe pinkish bag. Ooh, right right on Let me let me bring this up here on the main camera. This is it This is the product pick of the week this week. It is the itsy-bitsy nrf 52 840. I love this board These are great. First of all lots of love for itsy-bitsy. It's just a nice size It's not too small. It's not too big. This does happen to be the smallest board We make that uses the nrf 52 840 from Nordic semiconductor. This is a Bluetooth le BLE capable microcontroller Which makes it perfect for all of your Bluetooth le projects such as doing stuff with fancy light bulbs doing stuff with iOS devices I think you do stuff with Your Android devices with it. I've done stuff in Mac OS over BLE Bluetooth le Bluetooth low energy with it It runs in both Arduino and circuit Python. We've got libraries to make it easy easy easy to work with We have a bunch of example code and a bunch of example projects for using this under both Arduino and circuit Python and I wanted to first of all, let's let's take a look at Bring up that product page right there. So there it is. That's the Product page for this one here today. It's product 4 4 8 1 Half price right now during this show only so you don't need a coupon code or anything Just throw it in your cart for that price nine dollars ninety eight cents us limit of ten per customer no resellers, so just actual Normal customers. That's normal. You can get up to ten of these. So if you have big big BLE project dreams, this is the one for you Excellent little board and we've got if you scroll down here, you'll see there's a little description Some bullet points about it including things like we have 1024k flash 256k Ram 2 megs of Q spy flash on it Which is great for your circuit Python projects for storing assets and code What else it has 21 GPIO pins on it six of them are 12-bit ADC pins You can read analog inputs on it such as the universal symbol for analog input a potentiometer knob being twirled Also has up to 12 PWM pins if you want to write out things like Pseudo analog LED values. It's perfect for that. Now. It's also got hardware SPI UART I squared C I to S for your digital audio output needs and if you keep scrolling down You'll find a link that takes you right here Which is the main guide for that to be seen or a 52 840 express This has some general info. It has the ever helpful pinout page That's that's the critical page right there. You can go and take a look at the nice big Pinout diagram there you can blow that up to full size if you hit that Original link there that gives you the full-size one. You can usually zoom in even further now. It's super big Suitable for printing and framing if you want or just keep it digital And that'll tell you the uses for all the pins the one Super sneaky special secret fancy funny pin on this is the D5 pin Let me go back to This image of it right here. You can see the pin Five there has a little exclamation point on it and a little extra line on the Output pad there on the silkscreen That's to let you know this one has been level shifted up to five volt logic So it's an output only pin on five volt logic. You can you can grab five volts off of USB pin there if you want and That's perfect for things if you happen to have sit maybe some neopixels that are not Working nicely with three volts, especially older neopixels. They really wanted the five volt or other devices where you really need five Logic this one has it on there, which you don't find a lot these days a lot of boards tend to be three volts Across the board. So this is kind of a nice little special feature there And it is an output only pin no input on that one Also, this is running on the Cortex m4. So so the nr 52 840 is a chip that's on the Cortex m4 Architecture, but it also has the built-in Bluetooth built in USB. You can use it as a USB device for things like MIDI and storage and HID if you want it to be a keyboard. It's great for stuff like that I have kind of a neat project here something I like that I put together That I want to show you. Let me switch switch camera views here And let me bring this guy Into view here. So here you can see I have a ginormous mechanical key switch Let me move the side image and make it a little smaller so that we can fit more on the screen here And I'm gonna try to just fix that Loan out exposure. There we go. So you can see I have our Itsy bitsy nr f 52 840 bolted to the side here. I'm just running a ground and one input pin to The switch contacts there and then I'm running it to USB for power. It's also so I can show you the code on this but The idea behind this is when I am listening to a podcast Or music on my phone Especially I find with earbuds in And then I suddenly need to pay attention to something. I'm often fumbling into my pocket to find the phone and hit pause Live demo including wireless stuff. So let's cross fingers. But this is programmed to act as a Uh, what do we call it? HID consumer control, which is things like play and volume over bluetooth le to the phone. So the phone here No wires attached, right? This is this is just a phone Right, so you're rocking out to your tunes and then someone needs your attention. Something needs your attention Boom hit the big button that just sent bluetooth radio wave youls across the ether into The phone and the phone by being paired to this in bluetooth mode I can zoom out a little bit more make it look a little more obvious what's going on here Like that, uh, watch the play button there. It's playing It's pausing now you can do all sorts of other things over the bluetooth You can do pretty much all of the transport controls next song scan ahead Volume stuff there's a lot you can do but I find the the the most critical one is I just need to Pause this thing Because someone's trying to talk to me and I've got earbuds in and I just whoa So that that's the project there and it's all running right on that cute little Itzy bitsy nrf 52 840. Uh, let's take a look at the code there. Um, if we Jump over to this view and get rid of the extra Uh camera view there you can see here, uh, I've got this coded in circuit python and this is based off of one of my learn guides I did on making a Knob using a rotary encoder on the circuit playground blue fruit which also runs the same chip So if you find projects on the circuit playground blue fruit if you find projects using The feather nrf 52 840 Uh the clue these are all using the same chip. So a lot of the code will be Transportable between them key stuff going on in the code here is that I've got the ater fruit hid library with its consumer control And consumer control code. That's the stuff that sends things like play and pause Uh importing ater fruit ble And then I am setting up the ble radio. I'm actually calling it blue fruit pause button. That's just the name I gave this so in fact if I go back To my Bluetooth settings here Adjust the exposure down a bit Uh, you should be able to see there's a item i'm connected to called blue fruit pause button and that's that's that uh Gizmo right there that that i'm hooked up to Then what we're doing is advertising that uh that blue that hid name Over blue fruit or over bluetooth i've set up two buttons actually i'm using The big button there but actually just for testing purposes I also used the little On board button. So uh as lady aida mentioned she put a button on here. She couldn't remember why well This is why so you can test stuff like One of your buttons without having to actually hook something up to it Which I love I love when microcontrollers have one little spare user button on there It means you don't have to just grab a piece of wire and and short to ground Or or hook up an actual button for just just just one button very helpful to have that built on there So thanks. I'm glad you did it Let's see what else happens. Yeah, so I've got the two buttons set up there Uh, and then in the main loop what we do is we check to see if we're connected and we kind of hang out once we do Uh connect we can move on with life continue on in the code and then all i'm doing is a couple of Checks for the button and the key switch And this is the whole command right here cc send consumer control code play pause and it's the same command Uh, and there is no notion with these of state So it doesn't know if it's playing and now i'm about to pause or if it's paused and now i'm about to play It's just a toggle that flips the state of that. Uh, and that's to prevent you from getting into weird circumstances where you've Started it on the device And are trying to stop it on the micro controller. So it's it's the same command, which is uh, which is nice um Let's see this uh This Big humongous button by the way, I love these we have them in the store It's called the kale big mechanical key switch. This is the clicky pale blue one. Um, you can see it has a huge Key cap on it Right there you take that off it's still Works as a button this one makes a lot of noise because it's clicky and then I just designed a little uh, three printable stand to set that on so, um, I think we have some guides. I think the reese brothers and uh Did I do one? No, I don't think I did. I think the reese brothers have a have a guide where they've made, uh, these switches Um a little stand for them. So you can probably look for that if not I can post This designer a similar one. All right pause that again uh And let's see What else any questions, uh that anyone has let me know over in the chat. This is uh, there's the product page I'll throw that back up there Uh, neat thing is that it looks like the r52 series is supported by radio head library So it could be used as a short range 2.4 gigahertz radio. I had no idea you could do that. Oh, that's really interesting. Thanks. Uh, Heel pie I've used that for some of the other Um, other rate like laura radio and some of the other radio stuff, but I didn't know you could use that with this one Um DJ devon trying to figure out if this is going to be a ble synth io thingy Uh, well, I don't know about that, but it could certainly be a cool controller for that. So yeah, that's a neat I hadn't thought of that at all. I should say so thanks for throwing the idea out there Uh, keel keel pie says a 40 percent ortho linear would be hilarious with these keys. Absolutely. I think we have 50 Of them in stock or something like that. So if you really if you want to go crazy with the huge buttons Fun to type on uh, let's see Any other thoughts or questions over in the chat? Um I think that covers it. Did I hit everything I needed to say? Do you have questions because that's the that's the thing It's the itsy bitsy. These are great. They're smaller than A feather they're bigger than a cutie pie or a a trinket Um nice size lots of gpio on it, which is great. It's a good good size because of that very similar to our kb 2040 it's also in that sort of um Pro micro to smaller teensy sort of form factor these little sort of 21 ratio rectangles with a bazillion gpio on them really nice. We also by the way Have some accessories for these you of course can can solder pins to them put them on breadboards or perma protos We do have a backpack that can go on it that gives you a lipo battery charger And and connection so that starts to me that starts to get a little bit over into the feather world So I particularly like these for projects where i'm uh keeping usb plugged in it's it's real convenient in this case There's no reason for this thing to um To run off of battery, but I don't have to plug it into the phone So so the fact that we have wireless means it can talk to some device you don't want to be plugged into but Running it off of usb works great to just have power on that all the time Yeah, so we do have some accessories you can plug these into so look for those I know c grover has made some adapters I believe to let you use some feather accessories, uh with these some feather wings into The uh, the itsy bitsy form factor. He's a he's a big proponent So look for c grover in our chat and uh, and you can follow the links to some of his Github to see some cool add-ons for that um And uh that I think Does it yeah ble always have handy to have I I absolutely agree All right. Well, I think that's gonna do it then for today Uh, thanks to everyone for stopping by that is my product pick of the week this week It's the itsy bitsy nrf 52 840 Go get some Freighted fruit industries on john park. It has been JP's product pick of the week and that's it right there. So go get yourself some no discount coupon or code or puzzle to solve just Get them at that good good price nine dollars 98 cents half off right now till about Now about the end of the show uh, once the show is up the price will will jump back up to the original Within a few minutes probably so Go grab some stuff throw throw it in your cart and uh, check on out Thanks everyone. I appreciate you stopping by and I will see you next time Bye-bye