Podcasts about qfn

For this week's EYE ON NPI, we'll Hazard a guess that you'll be excited to see the Raspberry Pi RP2350 chip available for purchase at Digi-Key for integration into your next design. We've been working with this chip for a few months and it's quickly becoming our favorite Arm Cortex chip, with fun peripherals and a well-supported toolchain. It also is one of the first mass-produced RISC-V chips: one that you can buy and start using for trying out RISC-V development without the 'risc' of worrying you may have picked the wrong core. Available in two chip sizes and with a boost in performance and peripherals, the RP2350 (https://www.digikey.com/short/mzpjhptm) represents a big upgrade to the RP2040 (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/raspberry-pi/SC0914-13/14306010) that you've seen take over the microcontroller world over the last 4 years. Raspberry Pi is famous for their single board computers (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/single-board-computers-sbcs/933) so much so that they created a full market for sub-$100 all-in-one PCs. The big disruption we feel they brought to the market was the creation of a hackable and open-source ecosystem with good main-line OS and driver support. With well-written documentation and up-to-date Linux software, purchasing a Pi meant you got to join in with a community that was having fun, not struggling with compiling out-of-tree kernel modules and closed-source firmware. So in 2021 when they announced the RP2040, folks were interested: could a SBC maker design low power silicon? Turns out, yes! The RP2040 was a fun dual-core 133 MHz Cortex-M0+ processor, with 264K of SRAM, with a satisfying collection of peripherals: USB, ADC, UART/SPI/I2C, PWM, DMA and timers plus the nifty PIO state machine (https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/what-is-pio/). The killer feature, though, was the price: at $1 a chip, and tons of availability with an on-going chip shortage, the RP2040 won our hearts and soldering stations! Three years later, Raspberry Pi is back with a sequel: The RP2350A (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/microcontrollers/685?s=N4IgTCBcDaIE4AcwGYCsAGAgiAugXyA) and RP2350B (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/microcontrollers/685?s=N4IgTCBcDaIE4AcwGYCsAGAQiAugXyA) two variants of an upgrade chip that keeps what was great about the '2040 but with some boosts. First up, the core was upgraded from dual Cortex-M0's to the M33: this means you get an FPU and better low-power performance, plus TrustZone security. The core is spec'd for 150MHz but we've overclocked it to 264MHz without too much complaint. You also have the option to get dual RISC-V cores (https://riscv.org/) instead. SRAM was also bumped: from 264K to 520KB. This is great for running interpreted languages like MicroPython (https://micropython.org/) or CircuitPython (https://circuitpython.org/). Like the original, the RP2350 does not have any built in FLASH memory. Instead, you will need to wire it to a QSPI flash memory chip (https://www.digikey.com/short/80t4zt5t). This way you can pick from 1 MBytes to 16 MBytes whatever your code size needs. This new chip adds the ability to wire in PSRAM (https://www.digikey.com/short/d8033bfw) to the same QSPI bus plus an extra chip select. This is not going to be nearly as fast as on-chip SRAM, but it's great when you want large working memory that the chip will manage for you: by configuring it in the CMakefile, you 'magically' get a huge area you can malloc. Another improvement is in the number of PIO blocks: the original had 2, the RP2350 has 3. The two biggest new features we found are the new HSTX peripheral and the 80-QFN RP2350B (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/microcontrollers/685?s=N4IgTCBcDaIE4AcwGYCsAGAQiAugXyA) variant. HSTX stands for High Speed Transmission and its a high-speed peripheral that can drive 8 output lines - note that it's output only! There's a few possible use cases, but the core reasoning is that this lets you control a DVI display directly from the chip using just the DMA and internal memory without requiring overclocking, PIO, or an extra core. Note that the built in SRAM limits the size of the display if you want to have a video buffer: you can do 320x240 @16bpp or 640x480 @8bpp but, still! Second, if you found the original QFN-60 a bit constraining in terms of GPIO, the QFN-80 'B' version has 20 extra GPIO available for just 10 cents more. If you've been doing grabby-hands in hopes of getting a reel of RP2350 chips into your next design: today is your lucky day! Digi-Key has these chips in stock RIGHT NOW for immediate shipment. You can get a reel of either A or B type chips, with cut tape individual components coming shortly. Both types are great, but recently we've been having a lot of fun with the roomy B type (https://www.digikey.com/short/mzpjhptm), with the extra GPIO. Order today and you can start integrating the trendiest new silicon into your new PCB assembly by tomorrow afternoon.

This week's EYE ON NPI is trendy and buzzy, it's Boréas Technologies' BOS1931 High-Efficiency Piezo Driver (https://www.digikey.com/en/product-highlight/b/boreas/bos1931-high-efficiency-piezo-driver). This chip is a compact way to add powerful high-voltage piezo drive to any product, combining three chips: power supply, waveform generator and driver. With a complete I2C/I3C interface that you can connect to any microcontroller/processor it's the most advanced all-in-one piezo driver we've seen! Piezo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piezoelectricity) discs are multi-use devices that convert mechanical movement to electrical signal, and vice-versa. They're most often seen as electrical-to-mechanical converters such as piezo beepers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piezoelectric_speaker) where an AC signal, usually 3 to 6V peak-to-peak square wave, is applied across the disk. The frequency of the wave is translated into a sound frequency. It doesn't have the same fidelity as a magnetic speaker but its much thinner, less expensive for the component and driving circuitry, and for 2 to 4 KHz beeps it's just fine. Piezos can also be used the opposite way, where mechanical stress on the crystal is translated into an electrical signal. In this way it can be used as a switch or force sensor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piezoelectric_sensor), again usually a few microamperes' worth of current is generated. For these basic uses, your standard microcontroller pin, or at best an H-Bridge will work just fine: you can drive piezo's differentially to get more Vpp across the disc but essentially we're still talking about only a few Volts. There are some times when you want to make a piezo really 'loud' - that is, putting 100+ Volts across the crystal to generate a big mechanical response. This is often not for audible use cases, after all if you wanted to do that you'd just use a magnetic speaker (https://www.adafruit.com/product/1732) that can get to many many Watts of output efficiently. FYI there's two variants of the chip: the BOS1931 (https://www.digikey.com/short/w9tz9tbj) and the BOS1921 (https://www.digikey.com/short/nnb0r29r). The '31 can only do piezo driving. The '21 can do sensing as well as driving, so it can be used for force-feedback products. In this particular EYE ON NPI we'll just be chatting about the driving capabilities of both. So, while we can do basic sensing/beeping with a few Volts - when we want to have significant motion for blasting sonar or moving fluid around we can only increase the movement by increasing the peak-to-peak voltage. Each piezo you buy will have a voltage rating - and you will need a boost converter to generate that peak-to-peak. For the BOS19 series of chips, you can get +-95V so 190Vpp max, which will drive any piezo you find, and you only need 3~5V input thanks to a built-in DC/DC boost converter. Boréas didn't stop there. Not only do you get a booster, but also a full waveform manager with I2C/I3C control. You can can fill up a FIFO buffer with waveform bytes to generate different shapes. There's a sine generator you can control with an envelope creator. Or, you can piece together waveform shapes for different pump/haptic behavior, giving you the customizability of a byte-wise waveform generator with the simplicity of a sine generator. They even have a Haptics Studio' to help you craft the waveform you want (https://www.boreas.ca/pages/haptic-studio). The BOS1931 (https://www.digikey.com/short/w9tz9tbj) and the BOS1921 (https://www.digikey.com/short/nnb0r29r) come in two packages: an easy-to-layout-and-solder QFN and a tiny-and-advanced BGA. Both have the same core so just pick whether you need simplicity or small size. Since its a pretty serious boost converter and driver - the piezo connects directly to the output pins - you'll need to watch your layout. Check the datasheet for their recommended setup to make sure you don't have excessive power loss or EMI. IF you want to get started quickly, the BOS1921-KIT-B01 (https://www.digikey.com/short/v9hn8mcd) evaluation board will let you use their configuration software to quickly determine how your piezo actuator or sensor response to the waveform generator and booster before you start laying out the components on a prototype PCB. If you have some serious piezo-ing you need to get moving, the Boréas Technologies' BOS1931 High-Efficiency Piezo Driver (https://www.digikey.com/short/w9tz9tbj) can do everything from voltage generation, waveform shaping, and differential driving. And best of all it's in stock right now at Digi-Key for immediate shipment! Order today and DigiKey will pick and pack your order in an instant so that you can be vibin' with your fancy new piezo controller by tomorrow afternoon.

Coming soon! We were catching up on a recent Hackaday hackchat with Eben Upton (https://hackaday.io/event/202122-raspberry-pi-hack-chat-with-eben-upton) and learned some fun facts: such as the DVI hack for the RP2040 was inspired by a device called the IchigoJam (https://www.hackster.io/news/ichigojam-combines-strawberry-and-raspberry-to-deliver-a-raspberry-pi-pico-powered-educational-micro-66aa5d2f6eec). We remember reading about this back when it was an LPC1114, now it uses an RP2040. Well, we're wrapping up the Metro RP2350 (https://www.adafruit.com/product/6003), and lately, we've been joking around that with DVI output and USB Host support via bit-banged PIO, you could sorta build a little stand-alone computer. Well, one pear-green-tea-fueled-afternoon later we tried our hand at designing a 'credit card sized' computer - that's 3.375" x 2.125", about the same size as a business card (https://hackaday.com/2024/05/07/the-2024-business-card-challenge-starts-now/) and turns out there's even a standard named for it: ISO/IEC 7810 ID-1 (https://www.iso.org/standard/70483.html). Anyhow, with the extra pins of the QFN-80 RP2350B, we're able to jam a ridonkulous amount of hardware into this shape: RP2350B dual 150MHz Cortex M33 w/ PicoProbe debug port, 16 MB Flash + 8 MB PSRAM, USB type C for bootloading/USB client, Micro SD card with SPI or SDIO, DVI output on the HSTX port, I2S stereo headphone + mono speaker via the TLV320DAC3100 (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/texas-instruments/tlv320dac3100irhbt/2353656), 2-port USB type A hub for both keyboard and mouse or game controllers, chunky on-off switch, Stemma QT I2C + Stemma classic JST 3-pin, EYESPI for TFT displays, 5x NeoPixels, 3x tactile switches, and a 16-pin socket header with 10 A/D GPIO + 5V/3V/GND power pins. The PSRAM will help when we want to do things like run emulations that we need to store in fast RAM access, and it will also let us use the main SRAM as the DVI video buffer. When we get the PCBs back and assembled, what should we try running on this hardware? We're pretty sure it can run DOOM. Should that be first? :) We also need a name. Right now, we're just calling it Fruit Jam since it's inspired by the IchigoJam project.

This week's EYE ON NPI is loud and proud - it's the Diodes Incorporated PAM8019E Class-D Audio Amplifier and Headphone Driver (https://www.digikey.com/en/product-highlight/d/diodes/pam8019e-class-d-audio-amplifiers), a combo audio amplifier that will add high quality analog audio output to your next design without breaking the bank. We've stocked and used the PAM series of audio amplifiers for over a decade, one of our best sellers is the PAM8302 (https://www.adafruit.com/product/2130) breakout which is a monophonic class D amp for basic projects. Things we like about it: its very inexpensive, it's rock solid, 3~5V power, hard to 'pop' and can drive 4~8 ohm output. But it's only one channel and we often get asked if we can stock a stereo Class D. Also, it's pretty common for us to get requests for headphone drivers. The PAM8019E (https://www.digikey.com/short/b3r00dw5) can do both, and has a lot of nice little details. First up, this is an analog in/out amplifier - no PDM or I2S or TDM. So this is good for either all-analog setups or when you have already converted your digital audio to 'line level', about 1Vpp. Since it's stereo out, there's also stereo input: don't worry about DC bias because you can couple in with 1uF and it will internally bias to half-VDD. Unlike the PAM8302 (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/diodes-incorporated/PAM8302AASCR/4033281), this isn't differential input, reference is ground. You can use either the Headphone amp or Speaker amp, but not both: the selection is done with with a digital input pin which will do a smooth pop-free hand off. For the outputs, there's the stereo Class D outputs. These come as two tied-load bridges (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridged_and_paralleled_amplifiers#Bridged_amplifier) which means you can just tie the two sides of each speaker to positive/negative without any capacitors. Class D is an efficient amplification architecture (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class-D_amplifier) and if done at a high enough frequency - in this case around 400KHz - the inductive load of the speaker acts as a filter so no separate RLC is required. For EMI purposes, the datasheet recommends a simple 100MHz 600ohm ferrite bead plus 1uF capacitor just to reduce the sharp square waves. For headphone, the chip uses a Class AB (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_amplifier_classes#Class_AB). These are going to give cleaner output because there's no intermediate PWM stage: speakers tend not to be good enough to notice the hiss added from Class D, but headphones are much more sensitive. Also, at the ~50mW output we're talking about, there's not a lot of benefit to optimizing power. Since headphones are by design 'single ended', you will need 220uF caps on the output for high-pass filtering. Some modern audio amps have a 'floating' ground generated to sink the current for cap-less output but these tend to be more expensive and also wouldn't be compatible with line-level inputs. Some nice details we like to see in an amp, especially one this affordable: spread-spectrum so the high frequency PWM isn't centered on one spike, undervoltage-lockout, short-circuit on all outputs, pop-free, non-clip power limiting and separate not-in-line audio level selection. The last one is particularly nice because on the PAM8302 we have to put an analog rheostat in-line with the input pins to reduce the gain from 15x down to 1x or 2x. This would require a stereo pot, which can get scratchy and fail over time. On the PAM8019E (https://www.digikey.com/short/b3r00dw5), the gain is set with a DC voltage which means you can set it with a potentiometer or a DAC output, and you don't have to worry about jitter or scratchiness because there's hysteresis over 64 points. We've already ordered 10 pieces of the Diodes Inc PAM8019E (https://www.digikey.com/short/b3r00dw5) to design a breakout. DigiKey has tons in stock so we recommend you buy some too, at 34 cents a-piece, at reel quantity, it's hard to say no! They're available in 3x3mm or 4x4mm package sizes, both are QFN-20. Order today and you can be bumpin' and boppin' with either speakers or headphones by tomorrow. afternoon.

Rural LGBTQ+ people face significant challenges and discrimination compared to their urban peers. But they are essential to building a more inclusive future for agriculture.To mark Pride Month, we speak with members of the community about their experiences. Hear from LGBTQ+ farmers forging inclusive spaces in vegetable farming, beekeeping and beyond. We also pick up where we left off last episode as Alina Luana de Oliveira delves deeper into the fight against discrimination in rural BrazilThis is Farms. Food. Future – a podcast that's good for you, good for the planet and good for farmers. Brought to you by the International Fund for Agricultural Development.For more information:https://www.ifad.org/en/web/latest/-/podcast-episode-62Rock Steady Farm - Rock Steady is a queer owned and operated cooperative vegetable farm rooted in social justice, food access and farmer training.They Keep Bees - They Keep Bees is a LGBTQIA+ run business in Western Massachusetts. We tend bees in Western Massachusetts and on the central coast of Florida.La Via Campesina - La Via Campesina, founded in 1993, is an international movement bringing together millions of peasants, landless workers, indigenous people, pastoralists, fishers, migrant farmworkers, small and medium-size farmers, rural women, and peasant youth from around the world. Built on a solid sense of unity and solidarity, it defends peasant agriculture for food sovereignty.Queer farmer network - The QFN was conceived to build community among queer farmers and to reflect on and interrupt racist, capitalist, and heteropatriarchal legacies in Agriculture.humble hands harvest – a worker-owned co-operative growing food to celebrate this place - Humble Hands Harvest is a worker-owned co-operative farm. We grow 2+ acres of organic vegetables, grass-finished sheep, pastured pork, and fruit and nut trees. We distribute at the Winneshiek Farmers Market in Decorah; and through a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program for both our veggies and our meat. We found our long-term home in 2017 on Hidden Falls Road, 10 miles from Decorah, on ancestral Sauk, Meskwaki, Lakota, and Ho-chunk land, and began functioning as a worker-owned co-operative that same year.

This week's EYE ON NPI is teamwork makin' the dream work - a collaboration between our favorite module makers Raytac (https://www.digikey.com/en/supplier-centers/raytac) and our favorite Bluetooth Low Energy designers, Nordic Semiconductor (https://www.digikey.com/en/supplier-centers/nordic-semiconductor). Together they've created what we think is the best nRF52840 module, the Raytac MDBT50Q-1MV2 (https://www.digikey.com/short/t8hvw1bt). Historically you've had to pick this up direct from Raytac, but now it's stocked by DigiKey which is excellent news for anyone who wants to integrate the powerful nRF52840 with little fuss. The Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840 (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/nordic-semiconductor-asa/NRF52840-QIAA-R/7725407) is not a new chip, we've been selling the Feather nRF52840 (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/adafruit-industries-llc/4062/9843410) since 2019 and the chip itself was announced in mid 2017 (https://www.nordicsemi.com/Nordic-news/2017/05/Nordic-Semiconductor-introduces-latest-nRF52-Series-SoC). It builds on the popular nRF52832 (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/nordic-semiconductor-asa/NRF52832-QFAB-R/6051565), a chip with an Arm Cortex M4-F / 512K Flash / 64K SRAM, but with a ton more memory: the '840 has 1MB Flash and 256K SRAM. It also comes with native USB device support, which is new to the nRF series but makes product design easier because DFU and computer-interfacing doesn't require a second chip. The only challenge is that the nRF52840 itself is in a funky QFN package with pads underneath, and multiple rows, which requires either very fine traces, 4-layer boards, plugged vias, or a combination, in order to get to the 'inner' traces. Also, you have to get your antenna tuning right - even though the nRF is very forgiving, it's still extra effort! That's why at Adafruit we have been using Raytac's MDBT50Q-1MV2 Module (https://www.digikey.com/short/t8hvw1bt) for years, in our Feather nRF52840 (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/adafruit-industries-llc/4062/9843410), ItsyBitsy nRF52840 (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/adafruit-industries-llc/4481/11497502) and CLUE board (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/adafruit-industries-llc/4500/11594501). We like that it pick-and-places cleanly and easily on 2-layer PCBs with 8/8 rule DRC, comes with certifications, and has a couple different built-in antenna options, all tuned and ready. In particular, if you want a larger and/or external antenna check out the MDBT50Q-U1MV2 (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/raytac/MDBT50Q-U1MV2/13968055) but we like the chip-antenna version the most. Either way, the module footprint is much easier to work with - you still have pads underneath but they're large, and you can easily fit vias in the unused spots. Just make sure you keep ground clearance around the antenna if you're using an on-module version. If you need tips on schematic and layout, just use our open source hardware design files to guide you - or check Nordic's devZone (https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/). If you've wanted to use the Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840 chip (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/nordic-semiconductor-asa/NRF52840-QIAA-R/7725407) for your ultra low-power Bluetooth LE products, but have hesitated due to the effort of integrating the QFN chip, we can't recommend the Raytac MDBT50Q-1MV2 module (https://www.digikey.com/short/t8hvw1bt) enough! And now that it's for sale through DigiKey, you can pick up some at a great price. Order today and you can BLE-ify your next design by tomorrow afternoon.

This week, we've been spending a lot of time testing out our ESP32-C6 Feather against a variety of FeatherWings, to test all the peripherals and pin definitions. Good news, so far everything works! Some folks in the community emailed us asking about different varieties of the ESP32-C6, and whether they should go with the QFN, WROOM, or Mini modules. We'll show all the available variants at DigiKey - they've got all of them - and the pro's and con's of each type. See the chosen parts on DigiKey https://www.digikey.com/short/cj4zv837 Visit the Adafruit shop online - http://www.adafruit.com ----------------------------------------- LIVE CHAT IS HERE! http://adafru.it/discord Subscribe to Adafruit on YouTube: http://adafru.it/subscribe New tutorials on the Adafruit Learning System: http://learn.adafruit.com/ -----------------------------------------

This week's EYE ON NPI has us pitter-pattering on our tippy-toes, it's the newest and bestest stepper motor driver we've seen, the Analog Devices' TMC5240 Stepper Motor Controller and Driver IC (https://www.digikey.com/short/rt0zpt4v) from the Trinamic division at ADI! Trinamic is famous for their stepper motor driver chips, which we see often in 3D printers (https://www.analog.com/en/design-center/evaluation-hardware-and-software/evaluation-boards-kits/trams.html), XY gantries and other robots that need fast motion control. Stepper motors are commonly used when we need continuous rotation for linear movement through a rack and pinion. We've got huge steppers in our pick and place machine, and most makers are going to be familiar with them in CNC devices like laser cutters, 3D printers or milling machines (https://www.digikey.com/en/product-highlight/b/bantam-tools/desktop-pcb-milling-machine) - servos will be controlling the X, Y and Z axes as well as any extruder. And if you have one of these devices you know they can be loud and slow: in order to get good precision from a stepper we need to micro-step, so that instead of a standard 200 steps per rotation, we get 16*200 or 256*200 (https://www.analog.com/en/products/landing-pages/001/optimizing-stepper-motors-microstepping.html). Microstepping gets us that beautiful precision, but adds a ton of noise because now there's a PWM signal that is vibrating the motor (https://www.analog.com/en/products/landing-pages/001/secret-silent-stepper-motor-control.html). That's where Trinamic's StealthChop2 secret sauce comes in: The StealthChop chopper modulates the current based on the PWM duty cycle, resulting in a perfect current sinewave with straight crossing of the zero-current level. The constant PWM frequency minimizes current ripple and, by extension, any Eddy current that may be found in the stator, reducing power loss, and increasing efficiency. The StealthChop chopper also removes variations of the chopper frequency, or frequency jitter, so that only the commanded variations remain. Thus, at a 50% PWM duty cycle, the current is actually zero. The result of all this is silent stepper motor operation at a standstill and at low to moderate speeds. We've covered Trinamic's TMC2226 stepper driver before on EYE ON NPI (https://blog.adafruit.com/2020/06/18/eye-on-npi-tmc2226-sa-ultra-silent-stepper-motor-driver-eyeonnpi-digikey-adafruit-digikey-adafruit-trinamic_mc/) and that chip mimic'd the common configuration for stepper motor drivers: set the microsteps with GPIO and then use a DIRection and STEP pin. That makes it easy for integration with any hardware, you just need some GPIO pins, but it means that you have to do the motion control yourself. And, once you have 2 or 3 motors, motion control code can get really complicated: you have to tune and configure ramp ups from idle to fast run, and back down so there isn't any jerky motion. What's really cool is that the TMC5240 has built-in motion-control! You set some configurations and then can tell it what position or velocity to achieve, and the microstepping is done for you. It even handles encoder reading, mechanical stall detection, and end-stop switch interrupts for you so you don't slam into the side of the machine by accident. To do this, the TMC5240 has a full register and command set, that can be controlled with SPI or UART - with UART there is node addressing required, but perhaps this is easier to integrate with low-pin microcomputers. For both, commands are sent for configuring everything from stall current, to motion control, to individual steps to temperature reads. Speaking of which: the TMC5240 come in two packages: QFN and TSSOP. TSSOP has a big thermal pad at the bottom for better dissipation, QFN is smaller. With either, use plenty of vias, a 4-layer design with dedicated 2 oz copper ground planes to keep the motor driver cool: these can handle 5-36V at up to 2A per leg, so they are throwing a lot of current around. You can pick up bare TMC5240 chips (https://www.digikey.com/short/vhvtnjbw), basic breakout boards (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/analog-devices-inc-maxim-integrated/TMC5240-BOB/21292888) and eval boards (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/analog-devices-inc-maxim-integrated/TMC5240-EVAL/17878664). Since you have to use the SPI/UART protocol to communicate, we recommend checkout out the pyTrinamic library (https://github.com/trinamic/PyTrinamic) which has added support to the TMC5240 (https://github.com/trinamic/PyTrinamic/blob/master/pytrinamic/ic/TMC5240.py) so you can hit the ground running / stepping. Order up some of these silent stepper drivers today and you'll get them in hand by tomorrow afternoon, you'll save tons of time on your next robotic or mechatronic project thanks to the tons of built-in capabilities on the TMC5240!

Better thermal efficiency, how to do better power efficiency, how to reduce losses, how to help people handle those thermal losses? This episode is a real treat. Our guest Steven Schnier, Systems Engineer for Power Management at Texas Instruments generously shares the different strategies for designing better thermal and power efficient PCB. Watch through the end, this episode is sure have great tips and strategies that you don't want to miss. Watch this episode here. Show Highlights: Introduction to Steven Schnier, Systems Engineer for Power Management at Texas Instruments Steven shares that Texas Instrument is currently focusing on better thermal efficiency, how to do better power efficiency, how to reduce losses, how to help people handle those thermal losses What is the best strategy in regulating the LDO? Eliminating the LDO to lower the noise, but keep in mind that LDO does not solve all the noise issues Steven briefly explains the difference between low noise, ripple, and EMI Using a ferrite bead filter is one of most common ways to suppress noise and switching frequency Steven dives in the details on the appropriate use of ferrites and shares about Texas Instrument's integrated ferrite bead filter Where would you add damping in that pie circuit that you might be putting on the output of that buck converter? Steven shares a tip on how to reduce output voltage ripple Ferrite beads help with EMI concerns, crosstalk concerns, and transmission line effects, but ultimately to kill the noise and the output ripple Steven generously shares different strategies for designing for better thermal and power efficiency Various ADC (analogue-to-digital converter) products at Texas Instruments When does a multi-phase converter applicable to use? Steven talks about the Texas Instruments' TPS series module equivalents BGA vs QFN, when to use what? Texas Instruments is going with higher power density, so expect more progress on that Links and Resources: Read Power Integrity related articles Read: The Beginner's Guide to PCB Power Integrity: From Board to Package Watch related videos: Ferrites in Power Delivery Networks - Part One Ferrites in Power Delivery Networks - Part Two LDOs Vs. Switching Regulators - Power Regulation in PCB Design: Part One LDO Deep Dive - Power Regulation in PCB Design: Part Two Connect with Steven Schnier via Linkedin Visit Texas Instrument Website

This week's EYE ON NPI is Big In Japan, it's the Renesas RA Microcontroller Series (https://www.digikey.com/en/product-highlight/r/renesas/ra-mcus) available at DigiKey in a wide range of sizes and configurations. With the chip shortage easing up, it's a great time to look at what chips to use for your next design. And while we have covered a ton of Arm Cortex microcontrollers on EYE ON NPI (https://blog.adafruit.com/?s=eye+on+npi+cortex), we haven't yet taken a look at Renesas' RA offerings. Renesas is a company created by the merging of the silicon design groups from Hitachi, NEC and Mitsubishi Electric (https://www.youtube.com/@RenesasPresents), so not surprisingly it's very Japanese-focused and used a lot in Japanese electronics companies but not as often in the USA. However, it's always good to have more competition and with the Arm Cortex standard, it's easy to move from one chip vendor to another without having to do a lot of re-targeting. So let's take a look! We saw Renesas highlighted over on DigiKey (https://www.digikey.com/en/product-highlight/r/renesas/ra-mcus) and the same day also received our new Early Access Arduino UNO R4 Minima (https://store.arduino.cc/pages/unor4) for us to use in making sure all our libraries work. The UNO R4 is the long-awaited upgrade to the popular R3 (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/arduino/A000073/3476357) which came with an 8-bit, 16 MHz, 16 KB Flash, 2KB SRAM chip. While Arduino has come out with many other dev boards since then, the UNO hadn't got an update to 32-bit in a while. The challenge? Finding an affordable 32-bit chip with native USB, Cortex M3 or M4, good software SDK and 5V compatibility. That last part is the hardest, for example there's no ATSAM chip that has both USB and 5V compliance. An acquaintance just came back from a holiday in Japan and she mentioned that "everything is just...a little better there than here in the US!" and that's how we felt when looking at the RA4M1 datasheet (https://www.renesas.com/us/en/document/dst/renesas-ra4m1-group-datasheet) The RA4M1 series is a great pick for an 8-bit upgrade. The core is a Cortex M4 which means you're going to get good speedy computation with built in floating point and DSP instructions. For flash memory, 256 KB stores your code and there's a separate 8KB "EEPROM" like section. For RAM, 32 KB is available. It's got all the peripherals you expect such as timers, DMA, ADCs, USB full-speed, I2C, SPI, and UART as well as some upgrades you can't get on 8-bit chips. For example, the ADC is 14 bits, and there's also a 12-bit DAC. There's 4 internal op-amps and 8 total timers! There's two I2Cs, SPIs and UARTs and also CAN bus. A built in RTC is a true real time clock, with battery backup. There's also capacitive touch sensing and a segment LCD controller - our friend Joey Castillo will love that! (https://www.joeycastillo.com/objects/lcdwing/). In addition - we also saw some really beautiful silkscreen board designs for the Renesas Gadget Series (https://www.renesas.com/us/en/products/gadget-renesas) as well as an online code editor for compiling for the chip series. (https://www.renesas.com/us/en/products/gadget-renesas/boards/gr-sakura/project-sketch-on-web-compiler) We're hoping some of that work gets revitalized with the many makers folks who will be hacking with the R4. If you can't wait to try the Renesas RA4M1 (https://www.digikey.com/short/wt4b872q) chip out, Digikey has an affordable RA4M1 dev board in stock (https://www.digikey.com/short/3qzr0bbw) which comes with a J-Link on-board debugger with separate USB port, a few onboard peripherals, current sensing jumpers, and tons of GPIO so you can prototype your design quickly. Once you've got your design sorted out, chips are available for immediate shipment in TQFP (https://www.digikey.com/short/f3m2pffz) and QFN (https://www.digikey.com/short/fn2m9bbm). Order these from DigiKey and you will say "Konnichi wa" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konnichiwa) to a new family of microcontrollers by tomorrow morning.

This week's EYE ON NPI has 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, it's the latest installment of the Wick franchise - and dontchaknowit - this movie is all about making rework fast and easy with the Menda/EasyBraid WickGun Dispenser (https://www.digikey.com/en/product-highlight/e/easy-braid/wickgun-dispenser), which will let you dispense de-soldering braid with the same ease and skill that our famous assassin dispenses with the bad guys! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSM_nz6gKOI) Solder wick is awesome for reworking any printed circuit boards. It's made of fine copper braid that often has flux embedded in it, and it 'wicks' up solder cleanly and easily. It's great for SMT, especially bridging on chips pins, and also is helpful for cleaning up through hole parts. Digi-Key has some great tutorials on soldering, including this one that covers fluxing, rework, wick and headers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJH7VLGJ4fs), one from Becky Stern with lots of wire-soldering details (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS4v2hIFp9I) and a video from Shawn Hymel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3Rc1s6EpSI) on QFN soldering and rework with hot air. Soldering is a bit of a messy process, especially for beginners, and it's easy to make mistakes where there's too much solder. That's where reworking techniques come in! It's dangerous to operate electronics with short circuits, as somehow it always turns out that the short is connecting some high voltage pin to a sensitive input. For through hole components, we always like to start off with a de-soldering pump, also known as a "solder sucker" (https://www.digikey.com/short/bvrwtzjv). Pumps are great for removing large quantities of solder, but are a 'big hammer' - they're not good for delicate tasks and also because they use the internal suction to pull solder away from the PCB, they're not good for removing the last solder from a through hole pad where the component has been removed because air just flows around the solder. (https://learn.adafruit.com/diet-raspberry-pi) Once you've got the majority of solder removed, use wick to clean it up. Do this by placing the wick over the area with solder, then pressing the widest part of the soldering iron tip against the wick to heat it up and cause the solder to flow into the wick. Finally, cut off the used wick! OK, not too hard - but suffers from requiring both hands which means putting down the iron while you yank some more wick out, then set it up, picking up the iron, doing the actual wicking, then putting down the iron again to cut the used parts. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDdgsjQDsXQ) If you're doing a lot of rework, the Menda/EasyBraid WickGun Dispenser (https://www.digikey.com/short/c4hztd83) makes this task easy by making the dispensing, positioning and cutting a one-handed task. The WickGun takes reels of braid of any width. Once loaded, turn the dial to dispense wick until you have a nice tail. Use the end of the wick against the spot you're reworking, and once done, press the trigger to snip off the used braid: easy-peasy-lemon squeezy! (https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wFx3pvNqeFk) The wicks themselves come with a variety of different solder widths and styles: from lead-free to no-clean and #1 to #5 widths with replacement cassettes available from Digi-Key as well. (https://www.digikey.com/short/vmq4q9vp) And Menda/EasyBraid WickGun Dispensers and Cassettes (https://www.digikey.com/en/product-highlight/e/easy-braid/wickgun-dispenser) are in stock for immediate shipment from Digi-Key, so you can order today and double the speed of your reworking by tomorrow afternoon.

This week's EYE ON NPI won't have you singin' the blues about Bluetooth stack development. It's InPlay IN100 NanoBeacon™ Bluetooth® Low Energy Beacon SoC (https://www.digikey.com/en/product-highlight/i/inplay/in100-nanobeacon-soc), an ultra-low cost way to make sensor beacons for data collection, with no coding required! These flash-less chips are packed with peripherals that can be configured with a desktop tool and then burned into OTP EEPROM memory. That makes them both reliable and very inexpensive, so they're great for distributed sensors that may end up getting damaged or lost. They're also great for when you want to get something into production super fast and don't want to spend time learning Bluetooth SDKs or wireless stacks. Bluetooth LE is a low-power 2.4GHz protocol that has some nice 'connection-less' capabilities. Unlike WiFi and cellular, BLE has the ability to act like a 'beacon' (https://learn.adafruit.com/introduction-to-bluetooth-low-energy) where data is blipped out for anyone to listen to. (https://learn.adafruit.com/alltheiot-transports/bluetooth-btle) Note that in beacon mode, there's no wireless reception happening - and because there's no need to listen for packets, the beacon can go into very, very low power usage because it just has to wake up, send the beacon out, and go back to deep sleep. Receiving requires a lot more power because you have to be listening at all times. Beacons are what are used in "lost and found" tags, for asset or people tracking, as well as distributing URLs.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth_Low_Energy_beacon) Normally, folks would use a common BLE chipset such as nRF, Dialog, or TI - often these come with a ARM Cortex chip inside that can run a BLE stack. The stack can either be the in-house brand such as the nRF SDK (https://www.nordicsemi.com/Products/Development-software/nrf5-sdk) or a third-party like Zephyr (https://docs.zephyrproject.org/3.1.0/connectivity/bluetooth/api/index.html) but either way you have to write some code and burn it into the chip. You also have to learn how to manage the low power modes and debug your code. For many basic beacon projects, such as measuring a digital, analog, or I2C sensor - the IN100 is pretty amazing: all the low power and SDK stuff is done - you just have to configure each board and burn in the settings. The good news is that you can deploy your beacons or sensor nodes super fast, and because the core is designed to only do this one thing, the chips are really really cheap. Like 40 cents per piece cheap! (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/rf-transceiver-ics/879?s=N4IgTCBcDaIJYDsCMAGFIC6BfIA) Your entire BOM for a beacon product could easily be under $1 including the coin battery. They're available in 10-DFN IN100-D1 (https://www.digikey.com/short/3jmnp8r3) and 18-QFN IN100-Q1 (https://www.digikey.com/short/mtp92d50) depending on how many GPIO you need. Since the trade-off for the ultra-simple design and low BOM cost is OTP memory, we recommend getting the IN100 evaluation kit (https://www.digikey.com/short/0q0jwwqq) which comes with a programming dongle and three beacon boards fitted with the QFN version of the IN100. Then download the cross-platform configuration tool (https://inplay-tech.com/nanobeacon-config-tool) and follow the YouTube video tutorials they've filmed to learn how to configure the beacons for different advertising modes. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJfQ059KzRg) Don't worry about making mistakes: you can always run from RAM to iterate the design before finally burning it into the OTP! And even if there are errors, the InPlay IN100 NanoBeacon Eval Kits are inexpensive (https://www.digikey.com/short/5z920hrj). Once you're ready to go into production, the individual chips are plentiful and low cost (https://www.digikey.com/short/97773wh3) so you can get into production almost immediately. The InPlay IN100 NanoBeacon Eval Kits (https://www.digikey.com/short/5z920hrj), IN100-D1 (https://www.digikey.com/short/3jmnp8r3) and IN100-Q1 (https://www.digikey.com/short/mtp92d50) are all in stock right now for immediate shipment from Digi-Key - available nowhere else! If you're curious to try this no-code BLE beacon chipset, order today and you can be Bluetooth Beacon'ing by tomorrow afternoon!

This week's EYE ON NPI is a throwback to the 8-bit era, with a new spin on the classic AVR microcontrollers we've loved for decades: it's Microchip's AVR® DD Family of Microcontrollers (https://www.digikey.com/en/product-highlight/m/microchip-technology/avr-dd-family-of-microcontrollers), a powerful update to the powerful and low-power AVR RISC core that came from Atmel. While many folks may be moving to Cortex M0 or RISC-V chipsets to get 32-bit performance, there's still a lot of demand and use for 8-bit microcontrollers. Cost, simplicity, reliability, code-size, and power usage can all be better on 8-bit. If you're only on a 32-bit micro because of peripherals that tend to come with the fancier chips, you might be surprised by what the AVR DD family has to offer. For example, these chips have external interrupts on (just about all) the GPIO pins. There's four 16-bit timers plus one 12-bit (that's *five* total timers!), SPI & I2C, two UARTs, a 10-bit DAC, and 12-bit input ADC that's muxed to almost every pin. In particular, the high-bit ADC and DAC are a little unusual to see in an 8-bit platform. (https://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/aemDocuments/documents/MCU08/ProductDocuments/DataSheets/AVR32-16DD20-14-Prel-DataSheet-DS40002413.pdf) There's also some funky MCP-specific peripherals that can help reduce BOM cost. For example, CCL/LUT is a peripheral that allows you to make custom logic-lookup-tables for making simple - but very very fast - multi-input logic gates that can use interrupts or peripherals as input. (http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/AppNotes/TB3218-Getting-Started-with-CCL-90003218A.pdf) For example, you can make a SR latch, logic gate, or Manchester encoder - you can think of it as like a 'micro' PIO or CPLD. MVIO is a new capability that we haven't seen before, where an IO port can run at a different logic level - either higher or lower than the VCC power. This allows easy bi-directional interfacing of SPI/I2C/GPIO to 3V logic from 5V, or vice versa, without the use of level shifting! (http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/Appnotes/GettingStarted-MVIO-AVRDB-DS90003287A.pdf) Perfect if you want to run this main core at 5V for speed and signal strength, but have some 3V sensors to interface to, or run the core at 1.8V for power and IO but have a 3.4V LED you want to light up. Clock rate is up to 24 MHz, can be powered from 1.8 to 5.5V - it's exceedingly rare to find 5V ARM chips - and have FLASH, SRAM, EEPROM and NVM. EEPROM in particular is not common on ARM chips, and some don't even have built in Flash. So think of this as a compact li'l chip with pretty much everything you need to get a product out the door, with a range of memory sizes and physical packages from QFN to DIP! (http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/AVR-DD-Product-Brief-DS40002215A.pdf) It's nice to see Microchip is still innovating the AVR line, to make better 8-bit micros that power the electronics around us. For programming, of course you can use MPLAB IDE but we like Arduino compatibility and SpenceKonde's DxCore (https://github.com/SpenceKonde/DxCore) looks like it's adding or added AVR DD support, so you can quickly get going with compiling code and using the basic peripherals in just a few minutes! Best of all, the AVR DD family of parts (https://www.digikey.com/short/m4qb8wf8) are totally in stock at Digi-Key right now for immediate shipment. There's SOIC, SSOP and QFN packages with up to 64KB flash / 8 KB RAM, all for about $1.50 in individuals, $1 in qty. If you're looking for an alternative to the ATmega328, this is a nice step up. We recommend getting started with the AVR DD Curiosity Nano board which is breadboard compatible and has everything needed to get started. (https://www.digikey.com/short/10n70tmc) Order today and you can be MVIOing towards your next AVR 8-bit based product by tomorrow afternoon!

just before sending off our PCF8574 gpio expander breakout board, we noticed that the package we were using (QFN) was no longer available...but we COULD get the TDFN version. so a lil swapperoo and reroute occurred right before ordering the panels. super risky because we didn't test the footprint but we were pretty confident. anyways, we did want to test before our big initial fabrication run so this is us snapping off a board and hand-pasting. turned out great and we'll be making this breakout next week! Visit the Adafruit shop online - http://www.adafruit.com ----------------------------------------- LIVE CHAT IS HERE! http://adafru.it/discord Adafruit on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adafruit Subscribe to Adafruit on YouTube: http://adafru.it/subscribe New tutorials on the Adafruit Learning System: http://learn.adafruit.com/ ----------------------------------------- #adafruit #speedup #electronics

Kanithea Powell is a woman on a mission. As the CEO and founder of QFN TV, she is determined to provide a platform for diverse voices in the world of film and TV. In our conversation, she stressed the importance of seeing things through to completion. For Powell, this is not only a business principle but a personal one as well. She believes that if you start something, you owe it to yourself to see it through to the end. This is a mindset that has served her well in her career and one that she is passionate about sharing with others. Here is an excerpt of our conversation "I have never felt more joy and excitement when I'm opening up my first box of books to hold it physically in my hand; it was amazing. There's something to be said about having an idea following through with it to completion and getting a product in your hand. Now you allow the world to come in and help you promote it, help you get it out there because when you create something beautiful, the world is just as excited about it as you are. But they can't promote it if you don't complete it. So I will say, if you're gonna start something, see it through to completion, can you say that again? Yeah. When you start something, see it through to completion. " Watch the Full Episode here: A Conversation With host Floyd Marshall Jr. -Kanithea Powell Kanithea Powell BIO Kanithea started her career as one of the founding members of the Orlando Black Theatre, the first African American theatre company in Orlando, Florida. There, she directed, produced, and performed in several plays before moving to Atlanta and starting a career as a television producer for a local TV station. In Atlanta she formed Qwest Films Network, and dove head first into the world of film - “Finding Juliet”(accepted in 28 film festivals, winner best short), “Two Minutes Two Seconds” (winner for best screenplay), "For Sale”(winner for best short film), "Humanity" (Winner for Best Short Film, best Makeup and wardrobe, best editing and is still on its film festival run). After making several successful films and winning a few film awards, she moved to DC and released her first book “BUTCH, Never Judge a Butch By Her Cover”. Butch has been featured in several national and global publications like Huffington Post, NY Times, Buzzfeed, Diva, and After Ellen-just to name a few. Butch can be found on Amazon, Barnes and Nobles and in over 23 countries. Now, Kanithea resides in Los Angeles and is the CEO/founder of the new streaming platform QFN TV. QFN is an on-demand streaming platform offering a curated selection of films, tv series and original works from diverse voices you know and a few you have yet to discover. QFN's content is available online at www.qfntv.com and via app services including iOS, Apple TV, Amazon Fire, Android TV and Roku. ========================== Submit Your Film to Our Film Collective: ifapfilmcollective.com Connect With Floyd Marshall Jr: instagram.com/floydmarshalljr tiktok.com/@floydmarshalljr0 Youtube: FlodyMarshallJr --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/aconversationwithfm/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/aconversationwithfm/support

The Allwinner F1Cx00S series of chips are famous for being "$2 linux-on-a-chip" with DRAM built in - all you need is some passives, a crystal, and SPI NOR flash memory to have a miniature booting linux board. It's not very fast, and it's not very powerful but maybe we could run minimal python scripts on it? we've never used this chip but we used to noodle with openwrt and this seems kinda similar. we couldn't find any open hardware designs so we're drafting up the schematic - hopefully get all the wiring for this 88 pin QFN right :) anyone use this chip before? #adafruit #linux #feather Visit the Adafruit shop online - http://www.adafruit.com ----------------------------------------- LIVE CHAT IS HERE! http://adafru.it/discord Adafruit on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adafruit Subscribe to Adafruit on YouTube: http://adafru.it/subscribe New tutorials on the Adafruit Learning System: http://learn.adafruit.com/ -----------------------------------------

This ESP32-S2 QT Py is so smol i just wannna pinch its lil cheeks! on the back is and ESP32-S2 with 4 MB Flash and 2MB PSRAM all stuffed inside this QFN chip. we verified Arduino works last night. So today we've been testing out CircuitPython support. Here's an Adafruit IO demo that sends sensor data from plug-n-play QT boards over MQTT to a dashboard. this demo has been runnin all day flawlessly. Just a few more tweaks to the design and silkscreen before we send off the PCBs - what color should we make this board? :) oh and...don't forget, we've got 20% everything in the feather category at adafruit.com/feather AND when you order 99$ or more, you get a FREE PINK FEATHER RP2040! https://www.adafruit.com/product/5299 #esp32 #adafruit #qtpy Visit the Adafruit shop online - http://www.adafruit.com ----------------------------------------- LIVE CHAT IS HERE! http://adafru.it/discord Adafruit on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adafruit Subscribe to Adafruit on YouTube: http://adafru.it/subscribe New tutorials on the Adafruit Learning System: http://learn.adafruit.com/ -----------------------------------------

During the ministry of Jesus we sometimes hear him asking what might seem like an odd question before he heals a person. We hear him ask questions like....Do you want to get well? Do you believe I can heal you? What do you want me to do for you? These questions can sometimes frustrate us....of course we want to we well Jesus. But what we discover is not a test of our faith but rather an invitation from Jesus to a person who is hurting....the question is in your situation who am I to you. Your healer? Your Saviour? Jesus invites us to go deep in our relationship with him and to see that in Christ, our connection with God intact, we have access to all we need. Are we willing to invest in our relationship with Christ? Are we willing to stay connected to where are help comes from?Melbourne Inclusive Church boldly and proudly proclaims Christ’s equal love for all people regardless of their ability, socio-economic status, sexual orientation, age, gender or culture.To support the ministry of Melbourne Inclusive Church go to: https://www.michurch.org.au/your-gift​​​​

This weeks EYE on NPI is a sensor with a magnetic personality and we're really attracted to it...You guessed it - we're looking at the latest 3D magnetic field sensors from Melexis, the MLX90395 (https://www.digikey.com/en/product-highlight/m/melexis/mlx90395-triaxis-magnetometer) These are some of the few high-magnetic-field sensors available, with up to +-120mT, that's 1200 Gauss! Incredible when you consider many of our common magnetometers for IMU usage top out at +-50 Gauss. The sensor also has high precision, with 16-bit output and built in over-sampling since magnetometers can be a little noisy. This sensor isn't great for IMU usage -- you'll want to stick to ~1 Gauss ranges for detecting Earth-level fields (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_magnetic_field). But it is excellent for magnetic field sensing such as that of a rare earth magnet. These chips are often used for 3D motion sensing of an object, when it has a magnet embedded in it. Especially joysticks and other user controls, you get the environmental robustness of optical with the cost of mechanical. Plus you get Z axis motion which optical doesn't like as much. With a little bit of math you can detect various motions, positions, twists and distances, all without any mechanical wear. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMbkFrGe5Ws) The sensor is available in both 50 and 120mT ranges, and in a few packages. We happen to like the QFN because it's pin-compatible with the earlier MLX90393 (https://www.adafruit.com/product/4022). Note that it is not code-compatible with the '393. For interfacing you can use I2C or SPI, with free-running or one-shot modes. There's an interrupt pin for data ready checking, and a trigger pin if you want to trigger readings with GPIO rather than requesting over I2C/SPI. We whipped up a driver over the weekend for people to use to get readings with an over-sample filter to help smooth out the readings. (https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_MLX90395) It's great to see revisions of sensors come out that give us better accuracy and precision, with wider ranges and lower prices and the MLX90395 does not disappoint. When ordering, check the last few digits of the product order code since there are two versions. The -10x series is 120mT and the -00x series is 50mT, you'll get a trade-off of precision and range. Digi-Key has these in stock right now in a variety of packages from SOIC to QFN to TSSOP and ready to ship today for delivery tomorrow morning (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/melexis-technologies-nv/MLX90395KDC-BBA-101-RE/12330664) Also via short URL https://www.digikey.com/short/znjjrv See more from the manufacturer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOw-nNtpcP8

This week's EYE on NPI looks at a new microcontroller series from ST Micro. Yes, last week was also an ST part - but this one popped into my NPI feed and I just thought it was so interesting, ST gets a double-header! The STM32L4P5 series of chips (https://www.digikey.com/products/en?keywords=%20%09STM32L4P5) looks like an excellent competitor to the Microchip ATSAMD51 (https://www.digikey.com/products/en?keywords=atsamd51) we use so often - with matching-or-better specifications. Let's take a closer look! You can get more spec's about this chip over at ST's website (https://www.st.com/content/st_com/en/products/microcontrollers-microprocessors/stm32-32-bit-arm-cortex-mcus/stm32-ultra-low-power-mcus/stm32l4-plus-series/stm32l4p5-q5/stm32l4p5ce.html). Here's the overview: The Cortex-M4 core features a single-precision floating-point unit (FPU), which supports all the Arm® single-precision data-processing instructions and all the data types. The Cortex-M4 core also implements a full set of DSP (digital signal processing) instructions and a memory protection unit (MPU) that enhances the application’s security. These devices offer two fast 12-bit ADCs (5 Msps), two comparators, two operational amplifiers, two DAC channels, an internal voltage reference buffer, a low-power RTC, two general-purpose 32-bit timers, two 16-bit PWM timers dedicated to motor control, seven general-purpose 16-bit timers, and two 16-bit low-power timers. The devices support two digital filters for external sigma delta modulators (DFSDMs). In addition, up to 24 capacitive sensing channels are available. They also feature standard and advanced communication interfaces such as: four I2Cs, three SPIs, three USARTs, two UARTs and one low-power UART, two SAIs, two SDMMCs, one CAN, one USB OTG full-speed, one camera interface and one synchronous parallel data interface (PSSI). In particular, we like some of the 'upgrades' we see compared to other chips - the roomy 320KB RAM, 5 MSPS 12-bit ADCs (that's the same as a basic pocket oscilloscope!), 9 x 16-bit timers, CAN bus (usually you have to upgrade to get CAN support!), built in op-amps, and... most interesting to me is a built in TFT manager! Not just parallel (6800/8080) style but the 'real' 24-bit TFT with HSYNC/VSYNC/CLK signals! Usually you have to go to a Cortex M7 to get something like that included (see the iMX RT or STM32H7 series for example). 24-bit TFT can be easily converted to VGA (using some resistors) or even HDMI using off-the shelf adapter chips (https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/adafruit-industries-llc/2219/1528-1452-ND/5761220) so it's really a neat thing to see. True TFT output is a rarity because of the frame buffer you normally need. From what ST says in the datasheet the way this is managed in RAM is to have a 8-bit palette of 24-bit colors. So for a classic 4.3" TFT display (https://www.adafruit.com/product/1591) that is 480x272 pixels, that would mean 128KB of RAM to address all pixels. A 320x240 display would be only 75KB. The LCD-TFT display controller provides a 24-bit parallel digital RGB (red, green, blue) and delivers all signals to interface directly to a broad range of LCD and TFT panels with the following features: • One display layer with dedicated FIFO (64 x 32-bit) • Color look-up table (CLUT) up to 256 colors (256 x 24-bit) per layer • Up to 8 input color formats selectable per layer • Flexible blending between two layers using alpha value (per pixel or constant) • Flexible programmable parameters for each layer • Color keying (transparency color) • Up to four programmable interrupt events Right now there's only two packages available - a 144 LQFP STM32L4P5ZGT6 (https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/stmicroelectronics/STM32L4P5ZGT6/497-STM32L4P5ZGT6-ND/11590990) and a 169-BGA STM32L4P5AGI6P (https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/stmicroelectronics/STM32L4P5AGI6P/497-STM32L4P5AGI6P-ND/11591137) but according to the datasheet there will be 48, 64 and 100 pin variant QFN & QFP's. For now we recommend picking up the STM32L4P5AGI6PU Discovery also known as STM32L4P5G-DK on Digi-Key (https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/stmicroelectronics/STM32L4P5G-DK/497-STM32L4P5G-DK-ND/11613090). Which has a built in debugger/programmer and is directly supported in STM32 Cube IDE. By the way, if you have not yet, subscribe to Digi-Key's new product feed at https://www.digikey.com/en/product-highlight/rss or visit the website (https://www.digikey.com/en/product-highlight/) for a nice interface to search through the latest exciting NPIs from Digi-Key! Visit the Adafruit shop online - http://www.adafruit.com LIVE CHAT IS HERE! http://adafru.it/discord Adafruit on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adafruit Subscribe to Adafruit on YouTube: http://adafru.it/subscribe New tutorials on the Adafruit Learning System: http://learn.adafruit.com/

The SimpleLink™ CC2652RB is the first crystal-less wireless MCU (SoC) on the market, providing simplified design options for connectivity by decreasing the overall footprint for factory and building automation and grid infrastructure. • By integrating a TI BAW resonator within the QFN package, there is no need for an external highspeed 48-MHz crystal. The device is a self-contained wireless MCU with integrated reference clocking resonators. • The CC2652RB device works in the full 40c to +85c temp range, which is unlike many crystal solutions currently on the market

Void Copper DonutsParkerWagon Chime Module RepairedStarWars Detonator PropRPI3 CM Motherboard USB Hub SagaLAN9514MP62551 or TPS2054BImproving the Prop Dev StickChanging to QFN from QFP PropUSB Type C for USB 2.0Changing the power handling?Original part is TPS2113Only handles 5.5V MAXNCP3901 is a Dual input MuxHandles more power then I need but no built in current limitingMaybe MPS has a good standalone current limiter?StephenBeginning the eq build. There is a lot to do so it is taking a bit of timeGold fingers and connectors - They work!Trying a special coax connection - Different rings on top and bottomR.F.O.Bluetooth chip doesn’t need a battery because it harvests energy from the airWiliotEmbedded in consumer products to provide easy access to a digital manual when the original paper version is long lost, or it could be put on a clothing label and used to communicate the optimal settings to a washing machine$30 million financing from Amazon and SamsungPossible release in 2019 but they are shooting for 2020HOWMAX30 - MAX-30 Single User EarplugsIncorrect part listing on Amazon leads to hilarious reviewsVisit our Public Slack Channel and join the conversation in between episodes!Tags: Chime Module, Detonator Prop, electronics podcast, EQ Build, LAN9514, MacroFab, macrofab engineering podcast, MP62551, NCP3091, Prop Dev Stick, RPI3 CM, Star Wars, TPS2054B, TPS2113, Wagon, Wiliot

Duane Benson from Screaming Circuits shares DFA Tips and a piece of history as he shares the story behind the scenes in developing quick turn prototypes. Listen to learn how one entrepreneur brought fresh perspective to the business that led to great success. And see why Screaming Circuits is uniquely positioned to handle all the leading edge components that PCB designers have available.     Show Highlights: Screaming Circuits was founded on the premise to get prototypes built quickly. It was a struggle to get small volume prototypes built and a market need was discovered. For prototyping - going abroad invites its own set of risks. A traditionally 6-8 week process, Screaming Circuits does in hours. We don’t specialize in a vertical industry, so we see a lot of the leading edge components. Layout isn’t taught in schools or its self taught. The experts who knew how to make layouts work perfectly have retired. We built a business around stuff being wrong. Stuff isn’t going to be right when it arrives to us and we have to fix it. Why are we having a problem sourcing parts? Personal interests? Photography and decaying industrialism. Links and Resources: Screaming Circuits Website Screaming Circuits Blog Downloadable Circuit Talk   Twitter: @pcbassembly, @duanebenson Screaming Circuits on Youtube   Hey everyone this is Judy Warner with Altium’s OnTrack podcast. Welcome back to another podcast session with us. As always we have another incredible guest with us today but before we get started I wanted to invite you to please connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm very active there and share a lot of resources for engineers and PCB designers and also - I don't think I shared this in past podcasts - but we are also recording this on YouTube as well as just an audio. So you can always go to YouTube and go to the Altium channel, look under videos and you'll find these also in video format if you should prefer to listen to this and watch it in video format. And also with Altium, you can always follow us on Facebook LinkedIn or Twitter and we love engaging with you. We always love to hear from you about subject matter experts or subjects you'd like to hear or learn more about. So, without further ado,  I'd like to welcome our guest today who is Duane Benson of Screaming Circuits, out of Canby, Oregon, correct Duane? Canby that's correct. So Duane welcome, we've crossed paths for several years now and it's a delight to have you and learn more about Screaming Circuits and EMS and how designers can do things to to be more effective in the design for assembly and just learn about Screaming Circuit’s model, which is a very unique model by the way, I'm eager to jump in. Well thank you I'm really happy to be here thank you for asking me to participate in this. My joy. So why don't you start out by telling our listeners a little bit about who and what Screaming Circuits is, because it really does have a highly unique model, and kind of the why behind you guys started the company and created this model? Well it started back in 2003, actually that fifteen years ago now. Yikes.. Yeah, I know, how did that happen? So about that time our parent company Milwaukee Electronics they had a number of customers that were struggling to get small volumes of prototypes put together back in the back in the olden days - if I can use that term. Prototypes quite often were sort of slotted in on an ‘as available’ basis. So say you might need five prototypes and the EMS company would say, well we’ve got a big run going on and I can put you u on the machine in two weeks so you can get your prototypes then. And two weeks come along and something else came up, so another week... Even going back before that, back in my day they didn't focus, for example, building a prototype.We'd have a big bag of parts and some blank circuit boards, and we'd hand them to this poor technician on a Friday afternoon and the engineers would go, could you have these built up by Monday? So it was becoming a real struggle to to get prototypes, get small volumes of any sort built and a couple of our customers came and asked us and said, can you can you help us out with this? It's just not working and the Milwaukee Electronics’ management thought about it a little bit and thought, why can't we short-circuit the process? No pun intended right? Laughter. So the management experimented a little bit and then decided,  , there's an actual business here. So back about that time they brought Jared Store out here to start up what they called the Screaming Circuits division to focus specifically on getting prototypes done quickly. Mm-hmm. And  , from that time the initial focus of the initial business was basically Jared with email and phone and one of our partners Sunstone Circuits, they built the blank circuit boards - the raw fabs. They'd give us a call and say, hey one of our customers needs some prototypes built, can you guys do it? And that's how the business started. So you guys created the synergy. Now I've had the pleasure of meeting Jared once at least, through the phone and email and Jared was young right? He was the son of the owner so, I have to insert that. Because I kind of love that those of us who are kind of old dogs in the industry - I kind of love that he said, well why can't we do this? And he just kind of, like you said, a phone and a thing and just said why not. Because he wasn't constrained by the way things were done in the past which I kind of love that. Exactly he was a young entrepreneur, in fact, I don't know if he'll want to admit this but this was his first job out of college this was kind of an experiment for him to get into a career, into business and he did a fantastic job. Basically by ignoring all of the old rules. I know yeah. Yeah and then in 2004 - well somewhere between late 2003 and early 2004 - we first went online with a very, very simple quote system. We boiled it down into six different factors and based on that, came up with a quote and it was all kitted at that point. So we'd say, hey it's going to cost you this much, send us your kit, send us your files, and we'll build them up for you. Now since that time, when we were talking earlier, it seems like it's morphed into not just specifically prototypes but just quick-turn. It could be quick-turn pre-production quick-turn production even right? Yeah The world of manufacturing of electronics has really changed in the last decade and a half  . There was a time when electronics were not going to be designed and built in this country. Back in the 90s, when I was working for InFocus again, everybody was outsourcing everything and then over the next decade after that, it was all going going away. Yeah. And there was going to be nothing but high volumes manufactured offshore. Well about the time we started doing this, coincidentally the open-source hardware movement came about with the Arduino and some of the other things that came with that. Kickstarter showed up and that really changed the hardware design dynamic. It lowered the barriers to entry to building a hardware company and over the last decade and a half the hardware startup has come back with a vengeance. The problem is, as manufacturing is really, really expensive - unless you're doing super high volumes - so these companies would run a Kickstarter, they'd sell a thousand of an electronic board and nobody would build it for them. So then,  , they'd then run off into into Asia and they toured all these shops and these people would either say, no that's not enough or they’d change the design, steal the intellectual property and, you can't. There's little details like that so, getting a hundred or a thousand or five thousand is extraordinarily difficult. And yet there's an awful lot of companies that sell just that many of something. Yeah, it's really interesting that it morphed into that niche right? Yeah. You had, it sounds like you had everything, in place to fill it right? You'd built it to do address prototype - traditional prototypes - and as the market changed you were kind of ideally positioned to address those kind of start-up Kickstarter things. So you and Sunstone have worked together in parallel, I take it throughout this process? Yes they've been our partners since the beginning, and at this point they build the vast majority of our circuit boards and we do, if necessary, go elsewhere. Or if a customer sends us the boards or requests something else, but the vast majority of our boards are built by Sunstone. They're about ten miles away over in Mulino Oregon. Another big city like Canby… Laughter - well compared to Milano Canby is the big cities... Yes well it's a beautiful area. So, tell us about what you would see in a given day and then I would like to ask you to jump into speaking to designers that may be listening, and go into kind of some DFM tips and tricks. But before we do that, tell us about what are you going to see in a day? To get a picture of what happens there at Screaming Circuits there's two factors that are pretty important. One is a traditional EMS company. We we see about as many different jobs through here in a week as a traditional medium-sized EMS company we'll see in a year. Wow! And the other factor that's important to notice, is that in - using that term the olden days - getting a quote and an order for a project might be a three to four week process going back and forth with all the files, component availability, making sure   the design works and then after you place the order, you've got the NPI process which is another three to four work weeks. So, you've got a six to eight week process that we do in six to eight hours. How is that possible? I mean we may not have enough time here Duane, but I've been in the EMS industry and it’s an extremely complex process, just getting the components you need and making sure they're right and there's not obsolete parts, and that you've got a clean BOM, and it's so complex. How have you condensed it without giving away your secrets? Well there's a lot of things that matter if you're building a hundred thousand of something or a million of something. At that point fractions of a penny count and you're going to spend a lot more time quoting. You're gonna have to worry about getting large quantities of components if you need 20 of a board you can go to Digi-Key and get the parts for a buck, that would cost you a quarter of a penny if you bought them at high volume, and that's still fine now, that's part of it and then you don't have to worry about some of the inefficiencies that would absolutely kill a high-volume manufacturing manufacturer. You don't have to worry about those because if you have to tweak things by hand, while that is more expensive per unit, if you're building 20 or a hundred or a thousand it doesn't matter quite so much. So really what we've done is, we've stepped back and we said, what is important and what is not. The objective is to get working boards into an engineer's hands as quickly as possible and you'll notice there aren't things like how do we make it the absolute least expensive, or things of that sort, it's about getting the working board's as quick as possible so you focus on just the things that matter for that. Right, you mentioned when we talked a few weeks ago, about it becoming what you had called a transactional model, which is really a different industry and you can go online, place your order in a very transactional fashion, but it also speeds up your time to market, and gives you something highly valuable? Yes it does, we don't we don't spend an awful lot of time on the financial component of it. For the most part you give us a credit card and we start building so we don't have to worry about the bank component of it. For larger companies we do, because some people, the government or whatever, they have to operate that way. But for the most part you just give us a credit card and that again cuts some time out of it. We also look at each order as an individual transaction, that's why we call it transactional manufacturing, or unforecastable. We don't have to worry about the fact that you're not gonna need exactly 500 every month for the next 24 months. In traditional EMS, you have to worry about that, you plan for that. We don't worry about that, we don't care. Yeah it's interesting as well it's neat model and I see it as a real enabler. So, congratulations to you guys. All right, let's dig in and give our listeners that are designers and engineers some tips around DFA. The way that you and I originally came to know each other is, I had been blogging and writing and then I came across a little publication you put out called Circuit Talk in which you were doing what I was doing, which was giving designers some really immediate tips to apply to make their jobs hopefully a little bit easier and so, I think you've done a really nice job of that. So can you talk about why you started Circuit Talk and then go ahead and share some of those tips or tricks that are around design for assembly that's gonna make designers’ jobs easier and smooth the time to deliver a good product in time to market. Well thank you. You  know the volume of jobs that we get - it does lead to chaos of sorts - but it also is a huge advantage in that we get to see every single mistake that anybody's gonna make. We don't specialize in a vertical industry so we don't only see mistakes related to a certain type of component tree. Name a component that's leading-edge, we've undoubtedly seen it and, so we see these things - and it's not just beginners, it's not just experienced designers, it's not just big or small or university - everybody makes the same mistakes. It's so complex and there are so many variables, so many new types of components. Geometries are shrinking and in parallel to that people have less and less time to design these things. Quite often layout isn't taught at schools, or it's self-taught. The experts who knew exactly how to make a layout work perfectly have retired now, or they've been let go, or things have changed so fast they can't keep up. Mm-hmm. So we see these problems every day. Case in point, one that I write about quite often relates to the QFN Quad Flat-Pack No Lead, and then the DFM. The DFM leads along one side. They have this big metal heat slug in the middle, looks like a very simple component, it's cool, it's small, has great signal characteristics. But most of the CAD software, when you try and use a QFN, the footprint is wrong. It comes from the library with the solder paste layer, not designed specifically for the component, so you've got to imagine flipping a QFN upside down. You've got a little row of contacts around the outside - very small - and then a big giant heat slug in the middle that covers almost the entire component. So most of the library components we found have a full aperture opening, so the solder paste layer is completely open for that heat slug in the middle. And what happens is you end up with too much solder in the middle, so the part floats up and the connects on the side don't connect. Oh boy. Yeah and this is even more prevalent with some of the open-source CAD software, or some of them with a lot of user-generated content, nobody told those folks how to make the footprint properly. I see. Quite often the manufacturers, in their data sheets, even specify it that way. But what you need to do is, to modify the footprint so in that center pad, you get somewhere between 50 and 75 percent paste coverage. So, you take out the default paste layer for the center pad and you put in a little windowpane-looking thing - problem solved. Interesting. Yeah it's a little scary, unless you have a partner that's on the ball to what you can accidentally pick up off a data sheet or how to interpret that data right? So okay well, that's a good one. Another one we run across these tiny little micro BGA's 0.4 mm pitch, some of them even 0.3 mm. I've actually seen a 0.24 mm pitch BGA. Yeah, some of the rules change with the bigger BGA's. You want non-solder mask defined pads, so you want the solder mask opening to be slightly larger than the little pad where the BGA ball’s gonna sit down. Yeah. With some of the 0.4 mm pitch BGAs, you want solder mask pad or defined pads, otherwise you get bridging. Oh yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, it kind of depends on the geometry of the solder ball, but that's a pretty common error as well. So you see these things that component manufacturers haven't fully studied, haven't fully published and they are  just setting people up for problems. Yeah, and what I have found - and not just in relation to components - I have talked to people who manufacture either components, or they manufacture laminates, and what's not widely understood is that sometimes the studies they’re doing is us. Yeah we’re their guinea pigs. Yeah, and then we yell and scream and we give them back data and then they produce overtime accurate data sheets. I was stunned to hear that, but it's absolutely true. They need to get stuff to market because the market is demanding it, and the testing is so complex and so widespread, and the applications are so widespread, that they can only go so far. And then the rest of the data has to come from real world. Yeah the the hardware industry really is paralleling what the software industry did.  We had open source software then open source hardware. With software, we started calling it ‘beta test the world’ because you couldn't beta test anymore, it's too complex. Right, it’s too complex, so we become the beta testers and I don't think that's often understood. When I first understood it my jaw about dropped because I'm from the old school, like you are and it's like; wait nothing would ever go out that was not fully vetted or understood and tested, and things have just gotten so complex. And so there's just a hard limitation there, it's not a bad business practice or whatever, but it's a reality that I think is wise for designers and engineers to keep in mind - another encouragement to work closely with people like you, that can say, we've seen this already a bunch of times, we know what's going to occur here. Yeah we've built our whole business around everything being wrong basically, start to finish. It sounds kinda funny, but It's all about this stuff probably isn't going to be right coming into us, so we've got to figure out how to make it work. I don't know, like what happened to the world Duane? This is not how we started but here we are. Another thing you talked to me a little bit about, you had mentioned one time in a conversation, about polarity markings. Oh yeah. That's that's maybe third or fourth in terms of the issues that we see here with diodes especially. Capacitors somewhat, but diodes even more so. Any kind of ambiguity, when you're dealing with machines, it's a problem. If you've got a barrier diode for example, it's backwards from what you would consider a conventional diode. So if someone marks it with a plus and it's a barrier diode and they're expecting us to know whether the plus goes to the anode or the cathode, we're gonna put it in the conventional manner, not knowing it's a barrier diode it's gonna be backwards so you can't use a plus to mark a diode. You might think minus, Also, does that mean negative or is that the lion on the diode symbol you can't do that because it doesn't tell us anything you've got to say K for cathode not C - because then we might think it's a capacitor, or the full diode symbol the down - lot of people will put in silkscreen, the mark that's on the bottom of a surface mount diode... Uh-hu. -which at  first glance seems like it makes a lot of sense - but only if you give us the exact diode that you got the marker off of. I've seen two diodes 0.603s in the exact same package from the exact same manufacturer just a couple characters off, in the part number, and literally, on one the mark is the anode mark on the other it's the cathode mark. I've got to I've got to do a datasheet and I have a clipping from that data sheet on the Screaming Circuits blog that shows that it's got this part anode mark, this part cathode mark. I made the same mistake myself. On one of my boards I put the little marker on there and I gave gave the company the orientation and the CAD files, and then I made a substitution because one part was no longer available and used the other one - same thing but it was backwards because I went from cathode mark to anode mark.  So, remove ambiguity. A few years ago I would say, it's okay to mimic the silkscreen - just give us the exact part. But with supply chain availability being such an issue right now, I would not rely on the mark that's underneath the diode because they can reverse if we have to substitute something. Okay I'm gonna put a pause there and talk about what the heck is going on with supply chain. Stuff about diodes like these, very basic building blocks to design, why are we having problems sourcing parts? Well we've been told a couple of things from suppliers. One is, they're telling us that the automotive companies are buying up literally an entire line. They'll come to a component manufacturer and say this particular part: I need all of your production, all of it and so there it goes out of stock. Internet-of-Things companies - the super, hyper-mobile devices are also causing issues because they're increasing the demand in the super small components. Well then the companies that make the parts don't have fab capacity to also make the larger ones so, some of the component manufacturers are telling us that they're going to stop making some of the bigger form factors 1206s 0805s even 0603s may become even more and more scarce because if they can make 0402 or 0201 to cover all that range they'll do it and not make the other form factors. Holy... I don't know what to say about that - if I was a design engineer I'd be freaking out - this puts people in a really tough spot! It really does and it's gonna change the way some things are designed. We have always had a policy that we will not substitute anything without explicit approval. Even looking at a bypass capacitor - 0.1 microfarad 16 volt bypass capacitor - in some cases you need exact parameters. There’s parameters you need to be exactly the same so you can't substitute. But there are also plenty of cases where it's just sort of by guess and by golly: yeah it's a 0.1, it could be 16 volt, 10 volt, 25 volt, 50 volt, whatever. If that's the case, people are gonna have to start being really flexible in terms of what they will accept for a component and maybe at some point the industry will have a flag on a bill of material that says: this one's engineered so it has to be exact. This one, just make it close. Another thing, our industry is changing so fast, it's just a big reason why Altium and I've   decided this podcast would be a good idea. Same reason why your Circuit Talk publication is a good idea because it's like we can't get the education out fast enough or get the news out. Like holy cow, why can't I get this capacitor? It's not a unique form factor specialized BGA they're capacitors! This is like bread and butter, so it's been puzzling to learn about that and I'm just really interested to see how these component manufacturers are going to deal with this and and again how designers are going to be forced to think hard about these parts it's really strange. Anyway sorry for taking a little side trip there. That's important, it's a significant issue. We're being told this could last until 2020 and when we get out of this allocation, the industry is going to be different and, as I said, a lot of the bigger form factors consider moving all to 402s. It's more difficult to deal with these smaller ones but those are the ones, when the component manufacturers catch up, it's going to be in the smaller form factors because they can sell them to people building small devices as well as big. So think about that, be very, very careful when you're picking the specific component and tell us, and other manufacturers like us, what parameters are important. Goodness that’s a great tip. You know I hadn't thought about it until just this minute when you were talking; I'm wondering if this will drive an uptick in embedded? Embedded like embedded passives? Uh-hu better passives. I don't know I've been waiting to see that. I joined this company in 2005 and embedded passives were in the news at that point, and I actually made a prediction on the Screaming Circuits blog, that in ten years - I think I said -  80% of the passives would be embedded passives. I don't know that we've ever seen one. I guess technically you wouldn't see it because it's inside it. No but you would know it was there, because I know it from my board manufacturing past, you would know cuz you would have to process it differently. It's a different process but I don't know what the cost trade-offs are there, but I've met Bruce Mahler from Omega and I've met some of those folks, and I'm just wondering if this allocation will drive, but I don't know what the cost trade-offs are or performance comparative. That makes me think, I need to call Bruce Mahler and get him on the blog because it's an interesting thing to ponder in lieu of what's going on in the marketplace. Yeah. Anything else you would mention off the top of your head that's something you see repeatedly that's a design for assembly thing that you would recommend designers to take a look at closely? Well the polarity, the QFNs, BGAs as I mentioned. Something that isn't necessarily quite so obvious is the data files that is an important part of design for assembly. Ambiguity on a board is bad, ambiguity in a data file is bad. Bills of Materials, if there are parts in there that don't match the board, that's probably 80% of the jobs that come through here, have some sort of a Bill of Materials issue. So, double-check that that's accurate and that it matches your CAD files. If you can give your manufacturer the intelligent CAD files like an ODB++ or IPC 2581, that significantly reduces the chance of error, but then there's a little irony in there too that a lot of board houses still prefer Gerber's so we have seen cases where someone saves and then; oh yeah, I can give you the ODB++, but they forget they made a slight change and so now we have Gerber's that don't match the ODP++ so, make sure all of your files are consistent. Make sure the Bill of Material is clear and finalized. All in all if you add up all of the files issues that we see, that's probably one of the most common problems. I mean, I run into those problems for myself. I designed some boards and run up to the factory here, and I know how to do this, in theory I know how to do this, but I regularly make mistakes that my co-workers chide me for. Well I think again, that leads to the complexity of the data that's available. The data sheets; whether they're right. I mean it is such a complex thing and it amazes me that we can even manufacture circuit boards and then put components on it and come out workable sometimes. Because it is such a complex process, I'm really glad that - actually I appreciate it - I don't understand all those steps but having worked for for both a really high end EMS that sold to tier one’s, very complex boards, and also having worked for a variety of board shops. I really appreciate the complexity in both those disciplines, and I think sometimes because a board shows up as a line item on a BOM that complexity sometimes can get lost on you. But yeah we're building things, even here Altium, into our own tool that helps, like an active BOM, things like that, that hopefully help. I think design tool manufacturers like us, I think we're doing a better job helping in that regard. Right yeah, definitely! Well the last couple items I wanted to talk to you about... well thank you for all that by the way, and again, we will share in the show notes your website. The Circuit Talking, I would recommend to anyone who is listening or watching - that you subscribe to Duane's blog or just Circuit Talk or whatever and we'll put all the links in because again, he's got his feet in the fire and runs up against these things as he said. Because they're putting through such a width of product. Like I used to work for an EMS, and like you said, it was a vertical. So we worked with military Tier one, and so the type of bores we saw was a niche, but you're seeing everything. Yeah, literally I mean we worked on a camera board, the electronics of it, for National Geographic - it's a plexiglass globe, they drop it to the bottom of the ocean, it's got a chain on it and when the chain rusts through the camera bobs to the top and they pick it up again. We've got stuff being built for the 2020 Mars Rover so, literally down in the ocean up into space and and anything in between, we've built Ardium base stuff, real simple things, through holes; we built a board with five thousand placements. It's just all over the place and it's just absolutely the most fascinating place I've ever worked certainly, because of that. Yeah I can see that and again, kudos for you - it's easier to do a quick podcast or write a blog post or produce a Circuit Talk that can go out to thousands of people and get that information out in that kind of global sense and be helpful right. Yeah rather than tell one person at a time. Exactly it's kind of a scalability of getting that knowledge out, so I really appreciate what you've done over the years. One thing I wanted to ask you about which it was a fun thing is about; I don't know six to eight months ago, I had the privilege to go with the Altium team for the first time, to a Maker Faire because we have Circuit Maker and Circuit Studio - Circuit Maker is free and and now we've bought a company called Upverter, which is also free, and in the cloud, and we also have Circuit Studio. So, we went there with those products and because of my position here as Director of Community Engagement, I hadn't had any exposure really to the Maker community, other than seeing stuff online, and I went and it was like drinking from a firehose. It was so much fun… goofiest things... it was so much fun. So, I'm walking the aisles, kind of collecting things to write about, or learn about, and I come across Duane Benson, wearing what looks like rap swag around his neck - it was like a clock you were wearing right, or something - he looks like a rapper and I'm used to thinking of him as this Duane Benson from Screaming Circuits and here you are, like fully immersed in the Maker space, and you had designed this device and had LEDs on it and I'm like: what are you doing here? So tell me about how you've come to serve Makers. It doesn't seem like, from a profitability or a business model, that it would be a market that a company like Screaming Circuits would address. So how'd you get there Duane? Well you could say that I'm a bit of a method actor, I mean I love... I've been designing small circuit boards for a very long time and writing the software for them for a very long time and one way of looking at it, is I'm a Hacker and a Maker who happens to be lucky enough to have a manufacturing facility. But more specifically, those Hackers and those Makers they are starting businesses. Yes they are. Many of those businesses become our customers whether they be crowdfunding or bootstrapping or getting investments, they are the future. The Maker community has a lot of students in it. It has a lot of weekday engineer weekend Hackers, it has a lot of people who aspire to start a new business and just such a wealth of creativity. And part of our mission I always like to look at, I'm just one person, we're just one company but if we can make our tiny little corner of the planet just a little bit better then we've been successful and all of those people who want to design electronics... M-Hmm.. -We know what they don't know. I mean, we know what kind of problems they’re going to run across before they do, and so if we know what they don't know why don't we pass that off? And some of those people will have boards built with our competitors. Some of them will build them themselves, some of them will have us build them. Whatever, we're helping them understand this industry better. And we are helping them build better boards. That's what we really want to do. That's why we're at the Maker Faires ultimately. It does always have to lead back to more business for us, and it does. People see Screaming Circuits, they get the Circuit Talk and they read it, and it's Circuit Talk a Screaming Circuits publication so all of that winds its way back eventually, to helping the business here, and that's how we can afford to do it. But if we can help the business build and grow the business and help these budding designers - everybody wins. This is why I love you, and love you guys. I just I love that philosophy, I love that approach. I try to live by an old Zig Ziglar thing and this reminds me of you and Screaming Circuits’ model that you just explained. Zig Ziglar used to say, you really can't have everything you want in life. If you just help enough other people get what they want. Right. So it's kind of knowing unconsciously that if you put good things out in the world, and you do the right thing, and you're ethical, and you have integrity, and you serve people, that good will come back to you and and you'll do okay. And I think that's a big key to your success actually, by kind of leading with service and and not ignoring the bottom line. We are in business to make money, we have to do that, or we're not in business anymore. So, I really appreciate that. Well we're wrapping up now and I think you've listened to a couple of these podcasts now and so two questions for you. One are you a nerd or a geek? [Laughter] I’m a Gunerd… That's the best answer I've ever gotten yes you're a Gunerd. Yeah, there was a time when those were really pejorative terms but I think nerds and geeks have taken it back and said, you know what, no we're not going to be ashamed of liking technology and loving it,we're proud of it. I mean, yeah so I’m a Gunerd. Oh my gosh, I'm totally gonna steal that and use it somehow Duane, that will come back to haunt you later I promise. [Laughter] And the other question is, but I think I know what the answer is, if you've listened to podcasts. I always ask designers and electronics professionals in the end - this is ‘designers after hours’ - so because there is so much creativity involved a lot of people, like you said are Makers or Hackers, or they play a musical instruments or they're sculptors or whatever. So, what is your kind of guilty pleasure that you like to do after hours? It would have to be photography. I chase animals around and take pictures of them, animals, landscapes, and then I have sort of a weird passion for old, decaying industrial sites as well. But photography would probably have to be my passion when I'm not playing with electronics. That's so cool. Do you have a website where you share any of that or is it just mostly personal stuff and you keep your photos and share them with friends and family and whatnot? It's mostly a personal thing I have had them on websites before but it's just my thing. And and what do you mean about industrial sites? Well, old decaying, industrial and rusty factories. There's a place here just north of Canby Oregon City and we've got a waterfall on the Willamette River and most people think of waterfalls as pristine, and nature and that's all wonderful, I love that. But this one: back in the 1800's they started building paper mills and  they built a set of locks. It's the oldest - well till they just recently closed down - it was the oldest continuously operated locks west of the Mississippi. And so now, you overlook the river from a nice restaurant and you see this shut down, decaying, industrial plant and - well no it's not the beauty of the river - but I see a sort of beauty in the symmetry and in the the way people constructed these things. It's almost like an architectural dig, you can see things from a hundred years ago, from eighty years ago, from sixty years ago, and you can see the evolution of that, as this thing built up and then as they abandoned it, and there's just for some reason...  I really enjoy that that sort of a view as well as the natural views as well. They do have a really unique aesthetic and things have changed. It is kind of like a little time capsule and the rest is actually beautiful and sometimes the design itself is beautiful. Yeah well thank you again, this has been fabulous and I'm sure we can talk more and more, but thank you so much for giving me so much of your time and sharing DFA tips and the story of Screaming Circuits, and we wish you continued success and we'll certainly share the website and Circuit Talk. And if there's anything else you'd like to share with us, give me a holler and I'll make sure we include those in the show notes. Thank you very much, it's been a privilege to be on the show here, thank you. Again this has been Judy Warner with Altium’s OnTrack Podcast and Duane Benson from Screaming Circuits. we look forward to seeing you next time until then always stay OnTrack.  

Arduino, The Gateway Drug To #BadgeLifeAND!XOR Check out the previous MEP EP#69 Incognito Mode for the last time the AND!XOR group was on the podcast Bitstr3m Did the Android mobile application for the DEFCON 25 badge Zapp Does the hardware design. HyR0n Embedded software, puzzles, ect DEFCON 25 RECAP Last years badge details Hunter S Thompson as Bender, bender on a bender Botnet Changing voltage regulators mid manufacturing run QFN design on PCB Iterative prototyping HotFix to patch BLE exploit Hacking IoT Vodka Badge Sales DEFCON 26 new Badge details Hardware or Software secrets? Double down on botnet Lessons learned to apply to the new badge? WS2812Bs do not reflow well QFN design on PCB is critical Implement OTA updates Iterative prototyping I2C Looking forward to this year? Not flashing badges three times Going to hacker jeopardy Want to see more people hacking badges Visit our Slack Channel and join the conversation in between episodes and please review us, wherever you listen (PodcastAddict, iTunes). It helps this show stay visible and helps new listeners find us.Tags: electronics podcast, MacroFab, macrofab engineering podcast, MEP, Podcast

https://blog.adafruit.com/2017/08/01/the-atsamd51-is-here-adafruit-microchipmakes-atsamd51/ Wow some awesome release news from Microchip about a fancy new chip that just dropped. If you know us (and you’re reading this blog so yeah you probably do) you know we just luuuuv the ATSAMD21 – featured in our M0 Feathers, Metro M0 and even the new Gemma M0 we just put in the shop. The ATSAMD21 has always felt to us like the next evolution for fans of the 8-bit AVRs like the ATmega and ATtiny series – with 256 KB of flash, 32 KB of RAM, 48 MHz Cortex M0+ chipset, USB, tons of timers, peripherals, ADC, DAC, up to 6 SPI/I2C/UART devices… using the SAMD21 feels so roomy and comfortable. Adafruit 2132 One of the most fun projects we’ve had over the last year is porting MicroPython to the ATSAMD21 (which we call CircuitPython since the API deviated a bit). Now, MicroPython works just fine on the SAMD21 and you can build many projects quickly, using the built in Python 3 interpretter. And while we absolutely adore it, it’s just a *little bit* sluggish on the ATSAMD21 as its only a Cortex M0 at 48MHz, and doesn’t have any hardware floating point support. And 32KB of RAM is huge for Arduino but CircuitPython can run out of memory if you’re doing a lot. As we started exploring CircuitPython more and more it became clear we could really use an upgrade path. So we asked Microchip “heyyyy so is there like an upgrade to the atsamd21 that’s maybe a cortex m3 or m4, with more RAM and maybe 100 MHz?” and they were all like “maaaybeeee….plz sign this NDA” and we were like “sweet!” and we got a bunch of ATSAMD51 chips and a datasheet! You can check out the no-longer-sekret datasheet here (PDF). The ATSAMD51 is to the ATSAMD21 as it was in turn to the ATMega328. More! Better! Faster! Here are some quick specs: Cortex M4 core running at 120 MHz Hardware DSP and floating point support Up to 1 MByte flash, 192 KB RAM Sizes ranging from 48-QFN to 128-TQFP (the 48 QFN is *nearly* pin compatible with the ATSAMD21 but it isnt 100% drop in compatible) Some neat new peripherals/upgrades: Built in 1.8V buck for lower power uses (needs an external inductor) Dual 1MSPS DAC Dual 1MSPS ADC Parallel capture controller (for camera/video in) Built in crypto engines with AES (256 bit), true RNG, Pubkey controller Ethernet MAC on the SAME5 series QSPI for fast SPI transfers CAN Bus SD/MMC controller “configurable custom logic” – this one is particularly interesting/weird, you get latches and LUT you can link up PDEC – rotary encoder hardware support The speed, and extra space makes it excellent for our next generation of CircuitPython boards, and the price is pretty good too – only about $3 each for the ATSAMD51G19 in reel qty. Considering its the same list price as an ATmega32u4 it’s an easy choice for us! We also like that the pricing is so competitive with other Cortex M4 suppliers, e.g. STM32F405RGT6 is ~$6.50/1K pcs and the similar ATSAMD51J20A is $3.70 (the STM is faster, the SAM has more RAM, it was hard to find a perfect 1:1 comparison) compared to the Kinetis K20 series (famous for being used in the Teensy 3.2) the MK20DX256 has 25% of the Flash size, 25% as much RAM, 60% of the speed, but costs $1-1.25 more. Competition is heating up! Ambahlahdolnogpf Any how, the Atmel ATSAMD51 series looks really awesome to me, and its now public and you can order some chips even from microchip direct. Some chips are in stock now, such as the ATSAMD51N20A-AU, ATSAMD51P19A-AU, others will be shipping in late October. We’ve already started designing a Feather M4 and Metro M4 and we’ve even gotten it going with Arduino core with some tweaks to the current SAMD core. Img 7279 Excited to try out this chip? We don’t have hardware for sale quite yet (and likely won’t until chips are shipping in larger qty in November) but if you have early hardware access for some reason you can check out our forked Arduino SAMD codebase at https://github.com/adafruit/ArduinoCore-samd/tree/samd51 for our latest code – full 120MHz clocking, GPIO, ADC, DAC, I2C/SPI/UART, USB all basically work but there’s a few tweaks and bugfixes still. The BOSSA bootloader working here: https://github.com/adafruit/ArduinoCore-samd/tree/samd51/bootloaders/x1 and the software bootloader tool here: https://github.com/adafruit/BOSSA_x1/tree/arduino We hope to get these all merged into mainline soon, and also a CircuitPython port that can take advantage of the awesome power that can be unleashed! ----------------------------------------- Visit the Adafruit shop online - http://www.adafruit.com Subscribe to Adafruit on YouTube: http://adafru.it/subscribe Join our weekly Show & Tell on G+ Hangouts On Air: http://adafru.it/showtell Watch our latest project videos: http://adafru.it/latest New tutorials on the Adafruit Learning System: http://learn.adafruit.com/ Music by bartlebeats: http://soundcloud.com/bartlebeats -----------------------------------------

Podcast Notes This podcast was recorded at the MacroFab Engineering location. See Figure 1. MacroFab had its annual Thanksgiving Potluck today. See Figure 2. Parker has been working more on the Jeep Radio. Part numbers for the IC's are the following: TDA8563 : 2-Channel 40W power amp TDA7429L : ST manufactured 3 Band Equalizer Audio Processor TEA0675 : Dual Dolby IC Stephen brewed another beer with his electronic brewing rig. He has updated it to be safer and less likely to kill him. See Figure 3. The FX Dev Board is nearing launch of the crowd funding. Video is almost done. The synth Stephen has been working on has the VCO (Voltage Controlled Oscillator) designed and layed out. Open-V, The First Open Source RISC-V Microcontroller. Students at the Universidad Industrial de Santander in Colombia, have been working on an open 32-bit microcontroller based on the RISC-V instruction set. It is being crowd funded on Crowd Supply. $49 USD gets you a first-run mRISC-V in a QFN-32 package and $99 gets you a development board with a SD card slot, USB connector, and voltage regulators. 160Mhz Clock Speed SPI I2C SDIO JTAG 10 Bit ADC 12 Bit DAC 16 GPIO Special thanks to whixr over at Tymkrs for the intro and outro!

Podcast Notes Stephen has completed the SSPS Analog board. See Figure 1. Testing will begin early next week. The Macro Amp that Stephen has been working on is almost done. He just needs to solder the through hole onto the board. See Figure 2. Stephen has been working with Altium this past couple weeks while doing DFM work for customers. He would like the software if it didn't cost $15K. Parker finished programming the new revision of the MacroWatch V2. See Figure 3. Uses the EFM8SB10F2G in a QFN-20 package. EFM8 series has tons of built in peripherals. Reduced power consumption by 5 fold. KiCad will be adding built in SPICE simulation to the schematic portion. Stephen is now willing to try out the EDA tool. ARM was purchased by SoftBank for $32 Billion. Parker and Stephen talk about the implications of this purchase. The ARM founder isn't to happy about the deal. Microchip will be boosting the Atmel AVR8 product line later this summer. Special thanks to whixr over at Tymkrs for the intro and outro theme!