Desk of Ladyada - Cranking through a huge backlog

0:30aaaaand welcome to disco lady Rita hey everybody it's me shutdown lady Ada with me mister lady behind the camera and baby Ada too behind the camera behind the camera so if you hear some jingling or cwing uhh...she's learning how to talk and grab things it's very cute you just pat her oh that's mine Hi ok hi help my monkey he he m'ha been holding her up and showing her my designs and asking for approval and she gets what I know it's good okay and that's right you're right you are my new review engineer okay at my desk this week while we are cranking well first of all there's any news from mr. lady there's only just keep an eye on all of our socials we have a lot of articles coming out as the changing landscape and computing continues to approach something the great attractor yeah okay the singularity perhaps so watch that we have a lot of cool stuff and we also have kind of I'd say a full suite of new things that we're publishing so if you want to see the latest yeah if you want to see the latest Lego smart brick and some of things we found with doing a wire shark scan as well as other Bluetooth tools neat they did a good job and then you can read articles about companies that didn't like a life 360

1:59style not a good job so any who lots of neat stuff obviously we're going to be doing cool stuff with Bluetooth nice to know what's good and what's not and like you're doing like wire shark for Bluetooth with an LLM which is saved you some shine I can't go back you can't just like look guys we know how to win wire shark we have done it we have one wire shark for decades I've done it I've done my time we're done and I'm very happy just to say words hey scan that brick find the scan with this back address scan that brick okay let's go to my computer so I've been cranking through so my desk has all the stuff on it and over the winter like I you know like took a pretty leave I'm getting back and you know there's always like more stuff than you can ever get done but I'm actually starting to chip away at this backlog and a lot of it is thanks to my lady to pie claw which is my

2:59github account which is doing work on you know on behalf of the install I have so what I do is I make a library and it forks it whites the code does a PR and then I review it I don't know show you review that it's in progress so for example the max 4409 is this is a like a really wide range luck sensor this library got done I'll show the WF in a bit the team act 2273 this has been on my desk literally since 2021 and it's always been like oh like I'll get to this 3d magnetometer cranked through it did a great job and I'm gonna order and get PCBs for both the A1 and A2 version there's like two ranges so that's gonna be coming soon yeah better read me the VCNL 4030 we talked about this this is the replacement for the VCNL 4,000 or 4040 which is like discontinued end of line and I think at a previous great search we found the 4030 was kind of like the best alternative so also like I've written so many of

4:07these VCNL libraries it was really great to sort of have my LLM do the vast majority of work one thing is you know there's there's like the first commit which we do and then what I do is I then start doing reviews and I go back and forth wouldn't I say like hey you know fix like the CI this is broken as I tested I'm like hey you know once in a while there's an I squats you read failure of oh XFFF I want you to skip or retry so I'll go back and forth with it after like the chunk of the work is done and then I'll do the I'll do the review so this is the PR there's a massive PR you know and I review the whole thing and I test it and then I go line by line I find like it still makes mistakes I find all the issues and then I merge it so one thing that is currently in progress is the RV 803 there's an RTC so right now it's there's a PR that's still open and so I go

5:22through and it's like 24 says I review each file and as I review each file like check it off and I say okay this has been tested there's just like with it RTC just like an orange if you're a lot of testing with like remove the battery put the battery in like power cycle it's a really power cycle it's not but I like I'll show some of these things over on the overhead a little bit the BCNL the RV 803 the team ag that luck sensor nothing I've actually having you doing it is it's doing the PRs for the library or it can tag commits sorry it tags releases does the release and then submits a PR it doesn't always get it perfect but it does a pretty good job so here you can see the PR itself is submitted by clause I don't even have to like do the whole like fork it find alphabetically where it goes then you know submit it to the PR fixed you know any request has so it's been really nice just to have like some of this

6:29skat work that I used to have to do is is now being done for me and we see oh sorry and then the TCS 3430 that's going to be in the store next week and the TMF 806 this is a alternative to when this didn't get a release because I'm still I'm still in progress of testing it this is a up to five meter time of flight distance sensor from AMS Osram we have a lot of the ST like ST has like so many time of flight the VL 6188 5315323435537L whatever tons of them but I want to have an alternative another thing is as especially as we get to the multi grid like they do grid it time of flight sensors the AMS Osrams are better and also they don't require for more download whereas the T the ST ones often do and so they can't run on a small microcontroller like you know or like an original micro bit or something so it's nice to have an alternative I like to have alternatives to the time of flight sensors so then let's go to the overhead and I'll show some of these in progress so this is the

7:48okay great this is this is the RV 83 so this is a alternative to the DS God what is it the DS318 all on DS sorry it's the precision RTC the DS3231 so the DS3231 fun fact it's using an old process that I think is like no longer supported well at maximum and so they're really trying to get people to get like it's like the max 31855 or something there's that's a thread couple amp but there's another similar precision temperature compensator real time clock but the DS3231 is like the classic temperature compensator real time clock and it's great but it's big it's chunky and it's so kind of expensive so this is really nice this is this is the RTC and what's nice is it's done by this company like micro crystal and what's funny is like they got really good at making crystals and they're like hey we're so good at making crystals maybe we should

8:52like make an RTC that uses the crystal and it's actually probably easier for a crystal company to make RTCs and RTC company to make crystals so this is the whole RTC and temperature compensator crystal here it's so tiny and small and it runs on three-voter five which is awesome and then we have a little coin cell battery on the back for the real time clock it fits into my kind of standard 0.7 by one inch so this is in progress I'm just you know making sure I get this correct this is one of those the TMF 882H so this is I think this is an 8 by 8 gridded time of flight sensors it's kind of cool because you're starting to get to the point where it's like LiDAR ask like you can actually start doing depth sensing it's going to be cool moving forward to getting this working another thing that we're working on is this this is it got a low cost this is the WF 100 DPC this is a low cost gauge pressure sensor so most of the pressure sensors that we have in the store are like the BME 680 280 BMP DPS 310 I know it's funny isn't it they're all named so similarly but those are absolute pressure sensors so they'll tell you like your

10:13altitude because you'll be like or you're with you know the weather because I'll say oh the pressure you're at is like you know 1,021HPA tactile Pascal whatever and you know that means that your altitude is above this much above sea level or below or there's a storm coming etc this is a gauge pressure which means there's a little holes that equalize the pressure and so it's naturally at 0 and then as you sucker below on the little tubing that I've like attached here the pressure goes up and down so we'll go to the overhead sorry the computer you can trigger this to start and I just dropped everything okay so at the computer this is not oh can you switch the baby it's look this is a very low cost sensor so it says the

11:18temperature is like 27 it is a little bit warmer near so that could be correct and it thinks the pressure is for kilopascals now it should be 0 and you know as most sensors you'll need to 0 point calibrate it but then if I take this tubing I touch the sensor I can you know get it to go up and down a little bit so this could be good for and this is good for touch centers like people uses for robotics because the pressure not you know maybe one of this range because it's a very wide range but a smaller range you know small changes in the squeezing of a balloon can be detected by this compared to the ambient pressure and it will detect whether like the robots touch something so this is you know I've seen these a lot okay and then oh back to the overhead and I'll show the last thing and then I think we will we'll do a time check last thing is I am going to get to

12:20this is asked for like very patiently for like two years like can you make a good cutie pie like quadruple or whatever so you can like plug in multiple BFFs and I'm like I'm totally gonna get to that and I keep like not doing it sorry Liz but I did get to making this terminal block BFF holder which also has a stomach cutie all of our boards have stomach cutie but like if people have shower they have like other stomach cutie pie slash show equivalents they don't have a I squirtie connector I squirtie connector and also a little battery charger so that when you plug it in you know here and you get two rows so there's an extra row over here and then you also get the terminal block I work this off to test but there should be a four mounting hole and you can break these up pretty easily you can run stuff off of a battery which I thought would be kind of nice so this is also wrapped up in dense you can see like I'm really all this stuff I'm trying to get this anything else

13:24I'm still getting to the GPS stuff I'm doing that lots of sensors going to be in the store next week so look forward to that STC STC C4 that's a you know indoor air quality CO2 sensor and the TMP 1119 or 119 which is the ultra ultra precise temperature sensor so looking forward to that as well okay cool yeah that's going to be good stuff so you'll see but two more two designs per week on average getting back to that you know used to one design a week and then I was trying to get to two now with all my claws and LLM's it's like two is easy and She's hyper scaling folks stand back you might see me sometimes have through your four products a week depending so she's there's variants like you know for this barometric sorry this gauge pressure sensor I'll probably have a couple different configurations okay how do you know time we are up to 14 minutes perfect let's go to

14:27the way to where in the world is the part I need the great search the great search brought you by did you key and eight of you thank you so much did you key every single week ladies or power of engineering help you yes you find the things you're looking for lady to what are we looking for this week okay let's go to my computer this week we've gone a bunch of requests about the ICS 43434 I didn't want to concatenate how many for it doesn't really need this isn't really I love this I two SMS mic we actually using a lot of boards it's kind of all in one you give it three vote power and it just like pipes out microphone signal which is which is great this is a bottom port so you turn upside down I think it's yeah digital pans right sorry the microcontroller controls the clock the bit clock

15:33and the left right clock the word select and outcomes data be in the D out based on the microphone you can have two of them and then you have one with cell low one was so high to get stereo mic you need a codec no I choose I scored see configuration no like crazy war you know a lot of bike it's pick and placeable it's you know you start washable because there's a port but it's been a great little chip unfortunately if you go to did you key now and you're like great I want to buy this it just went last time by like two weeks ago and took a little asking me hey really like this I two S mic you use it what are you going to use it alternative and unfortunately all that alternative I had been using the SPH and something is also end of line which is really a bummer because again I really I know it's so very sad I really love this mic so they recommend I just can recommend this MMI CT 5837 this is I'm sure very nice microphone but it's PDM

16:38so watch out for that a lot of times digital microphones are PDM not I 2S and they're a little less expensive because of it you have to spend more to get I 2S output can it's like it's a kind of unusual thing but I really love it so this is it's kind of cool though it does it has an ultrasonic mode we won't probably have a break up for this sensor because it is a very cool sensor but it only has clock and data out you need to have a PDM receiver that can convert that into I 2S and there's chips that do it but now you have another chip so let's go back to here and select you know we want I 2S digital it says 10 options and then what if we select man just if it's okay so that's good let's we don't want to do the part status last time by we are going to see what comes up 10 is not that much and we see a couple options so looking at the product status let's let's drag this over

17:40okay so looking at the active status you'll see a lot of these are obsolete this is the SPH of 6545 I was using this it's a great little center it's still there's still a lot in stock but it is last time by obsolete this is that thing I was looking for obsolete and then these are not active or stock anymore so let's go and click on normally stocking just look at all the ones that are going to be available long term and this is it not a lot of options so one is the MICT 5848 so this is not the 47 just looked at that 47 so the 48 is an I 2S microphone but it looks pretty good 27 to 18 kilohertz but it's 1.8 volts only doesn't matter maybe to you it doesn't maybe you're working with something with 1.8 volts but it means that if you are using this with 3.3 volt logic like most microcontrollers the SP32 your Raspberry Pi

18:41you're going to be at a lot because those tend to run on 3.3 volt logic and then once you have logic shifting okay now you know it's the price and the size is doubled so the next option this one is marketplace so it's like going to be somewhat you know you can get it but it's not in stock right now the other alternative is this DMM 426 and this one is from PUI this is also this is rated voltage 1.8 but you can run it at 3.3 and it does I 2S outputs and it looks pretty good you know it has the same set of setup as before you can have 2 microphones if you want it goes up to about you know it's not perfectly linear as normal because the small mic looks like it's good from about 20 to 18 kilohertz it probably has a slightly different pin out but you know you check it out but this is the one thing available the price is good less than 2 bucks

19:44so I'll probably end up making a breakout board for this as an alternative to that ICS 4343 now last time by usually means you can get it for another year or so but if you're designing something now I would definitely use this chip this microphone instead and as your old designs have to get revised or if you can try swapping out for this one it's got a slightly different response curve but hopefully good enough you can you can make some tweaks to your firmware or your software and get it running so this is my pick for the great search that was a great search in the world is that part I need the great search with DJ Dr. Shea? I know great Easy peasy lemon squeezy We're back at a while ago Multiple children, multiple products, no crying, break times over, we are merging with the machine

20:48and at springtime I'm loving it I'm so excited to now you know like it'll be so much fun to be like we're going to be out at the park with the kids and we'll be on like our telegram and be like hey can you reverse engineer this binary hey can you download this data sheet Yes It's a totally new world It's really amazing There is a lot of change ahead it's going to happen whether you want it to or not that's how time works It's possible to figure out ways to enjoy the journey See you all next week Yeah Thanks everybody See you all next week