Digikey group buy thread

[Adam Cox]

Hey folks, as mentioned in the newsletter that just went out, we're going to try to coordinate a group buy ahead of our social night on the 25th. So if you have some electronics components you've been thinking about, now is the time. Reply to this thread with links and quantities of what you want. Free shipping kicks in at $100 so hopefully we can make it to that total. 

Deadline for orders is 8pm on Tuesday, Jan. 16th so that I can put the order in and have everything in time for social night. You can pay me with cash, or preferably e-transfer, at the social night. 

I'm still looking for a few things myself but am probably going to grab a few ESP32 boards: https://www.digikey.ca/en/products/detail/seeed-technology-co-ltd/113991054/16652880

Cheers,
Adam

[Shawn Wilson]

@Bill Morrow:

What are you using to capture your temperatures?  And what are you using to power them?

@Adam

I'd be happy to have these:

377-2093-ND

BC-32625

Bud Industries

JUMPER KIT VARIOUS 26AWG 65PCS  QUANTITY:1

1528-1964-ND

1954

Adafruit Industries LLC

JUMPER WIRE M TO F 6" 28AWG  QUANTITY:2

[Bill Morrow]

On Mon, Jan 15, 2024 at 9:46 AM Shawn Wilson <redsky...@gmail.com> wrote:

@Bill Morrow:

What are you using to capture your temperatures?  And what are you using to power them?

A variety of devices. They all publish MQTT data, which Home Assistant or weewx subscribe to and store in their databases.
1) In the attic and crawlspace, one of those white box Arietta G25 SOC we had donated, using an average pixel value from the infrared grideye. I did a show and tell about these once. Slide 22 in here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1v-nLrh1OHmuAzsLcWrvBmdAyNvJUe2zNkTtrEN2jlDU/

https://github.com/morrowwm/arietta_whitebox/blob/main/rootfs/etc/Scripts/nodesensors.py is the script

2) for > 5 years an ESP8266 powered by a wall wart with attached HTU21 has been reporting temperature and humidity behind a bookshelf in our main living area. This is running some code I wrote, but could easily be just Tasmota with configuration

3) Outside, I have gone through a lot of iterations, because of the tough environment. Right now, I'm relying on an armored DS18B20 attached to a Raspberry Pi 4 out our backdoor whose main purpose has been listening for and classifying bird songs.

4) for the heat pump mania, I'm mostly using little ESP-01 boards https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32893755787.html

or smart plugs e.g. Sonoff Basic with a header and DB18B20 temperature sensors 

Both of these are running Tasmota https://github.com/arendst/Tasmota which automatically finds the DS18B20s, and with the right configuration, will MQTT publish the data

The little aliexpress boards aren't any good for temperature reading on their own, because the sensor is right under the ESP-01. So I soldered on another DS18B20 with a meter of wire separating it from the board. Running off another old wall wart.

The smart plugs are mostly where they are for some semi-legit reason, and so powering the sensor is free. For example, I had one scheduling our Christmas tree lights. 

5) an acquaintance of mine has started using Sonoff temperature sensors which use a coin cell for power. They squawk zigbee traffic to his gateway attached to a USB port on his home automation server. He's a big Tasmota fan, and has Tasmota-ized all his devices.

https://sonoff.tech/product/gateway-and-sensors/zbbridge/

This is a cleaner but slightly expensive way to go. To be honest, not that more expensive. The bridge is $20 or less, and the sensors are under $10, I think. 

[Adam Smith]

I would like to add to the Digikey order:

2x EG5985-ND SWITCH TACTILE SPST-NO 0.05A 12V

1x PB305-ND RELAY GEN PURPOSE SPST 30A 24V

3x 2648-SC0918CT-ND RASPBERRY PI PICO W RP2040

[Jordan Edsall]

You can add 5 of those ESP boards for me too.

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[Shawn Wilson]

That's quite a menagerie!

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[Shawn Wilson]

I will happily take a couple ESP32s as well, please.

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[Doug Couch]

I'd like 3 of the ESP32's as well.  I'm having a bit of decision paralysis just because the Digikey catalogue is so extensive! I'll try to narrow down my choices before this evening!

Thanks,

-Doug

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[Adam Cox]

Just a reminder that order deadline is at 8pm, get your last minute requests in soon. With so much interest in those ESP32s we've well cleared the $100 for free shipping. 

-Adam

[morr...@gmail.com]

A few of us jumped on board (heh) and bought the Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32C3.

Here's my first steps in using it.

1) Snapping the antenna onto the tiny gold IPEX connector between the two buttons took some force. Make sure you have it aligned right, and then give 'er. I've bent these before. Good luck! You do want the antenna on before powering up the board. Some transmitter will burn themselves out, if there's no antenna to dissipate the load. Let us know if these are protected from that.

2) Following https://wiki.seeedstudio.com/XIAO_ESP32C3_Getting_Started/ instructions

1. plugged it in and a microscopic LED flickered feebly beside of the USB-C port. I believe this is the battery charge indicator.
2. executed dmesg (I'm using linux):
   [503583.706970] usb 5-1.1.3: New USB device found, idVendor=303a, idProduct=1001, bcdDevice= 1.01
   [503583.706975] usb 5-1.1.3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
   [503583.706978] usb 5-1.1.3: Product: USB JTAG/serial debug unit
   [503583.706980] usb 5-1.1.3: Manufacturer: Espressif
   [503583.706982] usb 5-1.1.3: SerialNumber: D4:F9:8D:03:5B:E8
   [503583.714321] cdc_acm 5-1.1.3:1.0: ttyACM1: USB ACM device
   
3. It tried to phone home immediately, LOL:
   ~$ picocom /dev/ttyACM1
   scan done
   12WIFI NETworks Found
   WIFI TEST is FALT!
   BLE TEST IS FALT!
   Begin First Test....
   1
   0
   1
   0
   First Test finish!
   Begin Second Test....
   0
   0
   1
   0
   1
   1
   1
   1
   GPIO TEST FALT!
   1053
   ADC TEST FALT!
   TEST DONE!
   
4. I already had the ESP32 board collection in the Arduino IDE, board manager. If you don't or yours is out of date, that's the next step.
5. Pick XIAO_ESP32C3 as the board. Make sure you choose the right one. The CPU on this is different than most ESP32 branded devices. It's the (new to Espressif) RISC single core.
   
6. Spent 5 minutes finding a low value resistor for the blinky test. I found a 200 ohm one. Lots of LEDs scattered around my messy desk.
7. Compiled and uploaded the blinky code. I have Tools:Upload speed as 921600, and it worked at this high speed, which is nice.

I'm moving on to try it battery powered. The description of how this board handles battery powered sounds pretty good. It's why I went for it. I'm also interested in seeing what kind of range the external antenna gives.

[morr...@gmail.com]

Digression to Tasmota.

https://github.com/arendst/Tasmota/discussions/16835 is an informative discussion.

I couldn't get the browser based installer or tasmotizer.py to work, but my suspicion is that's because of my computer's flaky USB.

I did succeed with 

esptool.py --port /dev/ttyACM1 write_flash 0x0 /home/bill/tasmota/tasmota32c3cdc.factory.bin 

from the command line. Make sure to use the C3 factory bin!

Once I had it on my network, I used this template: https://templates.blakadder.com/seeedstudio_XIAO_ESP32C3.html

We could probably have a Tasmota session online. Any interest?

[Shawn Wilson]

Thanks, Bill. Sounds like you're taking the brunt of the learning curve for me. :)

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[Peter-Frank Spierenburg]

For connecting the antenna to the board. The key is getting even pressure perpendicular to the board. Just squeezing between fingers is painful, and risks mangling the connector.

My approach is to lay the board on a table, and use the flat base of an AAA or AA battery to press the connector into the socket. Your fingers get much more purchase on a battery, and keeping the battery perpendicular to the table is much easier.

Hope this helps.

Peter.

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[morr...@gmail.com]

Good idea, Peter.

[Doug Couch]

Okay, I'll admit it. I'm a little addicted to ESP32's. Also, now that I have a couple of these ESP32C3's around I think I need more to replace the older chonky form factors which I'm just going to solder straight into projects.

All of that is to say that I will be making a DigiKey order sometime in the next week and if anyone wants to join in just let me know!

P.S. I'm also buying an M5Stack Atom Echo just to experiment around with the Home Assistant voice assistant in case anyone else is running a HA in their house.

-Doug

On Fri, Jan 12, 2024 at 11:22 PM Adam Cox <adam.un...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Bill Morrow]

Could you add this, Doug?

https://www.digikey.ca/en/products/detail/edatec/ED-LENS-M12-250150-05/20195778 

That Echo thing looks interesting. Too many projects on the go already, though. I'll let you figure it out first, ha ha.

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