Hi a friend who shall remain nameless I just asked me if I knew of a source for any handheld enclosure that has a built in double-a or triple-a batteries in compartment and I said yeah, you know you can get those and like, even like local Jake are sold on. There it is and it's got two doublea's in it or whatever. you know they're a dime a dozen. but then he said no, I want three double-a or three Triple A batteries And that's actually a bit more difficult because even just a regular battery holders on their own, There's not too many around that holds three cells double A or Triple A You can get ones that hold, you know, - of course, ones that hold 43.

not very common in fact I bought a whole bunch of these for my microcurrent because my microcurrent needs well, it can actually have optionally three Triple A batteries in the basis of the thing to give it extra battery life and extra output voltage and stuff like that, and three just fits. and I at the source, a three way triple-a battery holder that I included way back in the when I did the Kickstarter campaign. anyway. so I thought yet, you know might be healthy a lot harder.

In fact, I'm sure it is to find an enclosure with three double-a triple-a batteries. So I thought okay, like I'll go have a squiz and of course the first thing I would do in this situation design you know I know this guy's good and he's already had a look around and stuff and just couldn't really find anything. So I wouldn't think of it be in the obvious places. So anyway I thought the first thing I do is go over to the Eevblog wiki.

Now you haven't seen this for a long time. In fact I haven't updated it for many, many years. It was Thing I started many years ago and there is. You know there's a whole bunch of resources in here and one of them is Enclosure Manufacturers.

Now the whole idea with this wiki is that you know people could update it and stuff like that. but I couldn't keep the spam out. So I just permanently locked the thing and yeah, anyway, so here it is. We've got all these different enclosure manufacturers has always been quite a decent resource for enclosure manufacturers.

I even just sort of got every enclosure manufacture, a new oven just whacked them all in here and you know the odd note and stuff like that. So I thought you know I go to my like ones that I've used before like sir Pack for example I've used those for decades and you know Pack Tech I've been using those in solder. this is a kid really? you know since I was a teenager once again many decades and you know have a look at those sort of ones and it like Pack Tech for example, you can go to they I think you know a few of them might have sort of kind of parametric. you search things I don't know I haven't looked in depth from enclosures for a while now.

but anyway, Pack Tech yeah, you can go in here and you can go handheld for example. there it is and oh look, batteries. Okay, so you open up those pages and you go in here and you find are there two Doublea's nine volts. Very typical stuff.

Nothing's really happening there, by the way. I've got a like a plugin for my Chrome browser I can't remember what it's called, but it automatically pops up photos when you hover over them. It's really quite handy for this sort of thing if you're wondering how that's happening there and you know I thought I could go into others, but then I thought no, you know look I Kind of had a vague recollection of Funnels flash Element14 now had a parametric search possibly for something like that. So I went into enclosures plastic enclosures and they don't seem to have a parametric search down here for you know, like features or something like that so that didn't work and I didn't want to go scroll through all photos.

you know you can probably try and go. you know, enclosure double-a or something for example like that and you know you might get lucky. but then again, you might not wear the enclosures anyway. in plastic enclosures, there's five, which mentioned Double-a I don't know.

Yeah, we've got Camden boss cases but there's no photos he's after. Go in and check each one and whatever. Anyway, too hard. So I thought I'll at least double check on Digi-key So let's go in and have a look at enclosure here.

and here is boxes and enclosures. Boxes here we go. there's 10,000 items you could also do this on Mouser as well. Digi Keys Usually my first point of call just because, right? And so you want to do some parametric search.

You're not gotten videos on parametric searching and stuff before, but if we go over here, Aha features. that's what we want because it doesn't seem to have like a like a battery section. but features might actually be mentioned in here. So let's go down.

and sure enough, battery compartment is a feature here. quite a few of them now. I Ordinarily I would select all of you can just go into select one and you can hold down the shift or Ctrl or whatever and select multiple ones normally I'd select them all with double-a but I know that a lot of these boxes that through experience they they either accept a nine volt or a double-a The ones that have nine volt and double-a typically will only hold two doublea's They won't hop because that's physically is similar sized to a nine volt battery. so I was pretty sure they wouldn't be three-way but you know if I didn't find anything I could go down.

So anyway I'm going to select all the double-a and triple-a It's not fussy whether it's double-a or triple-a so I'm going to support select all of those and you know there might be. It might be called something else. Just scroll all the way through often. Parametric searches or features like this can go under.

You know, multiple names depending on the manufacturer and how they're called something and how it's entered into the digi-key database for example. So then you just apply filters and bingo. We've got ourselves a bunch of boxes down here, and the third. Like you know, usually you're not going to get any hint or you might get a hint in the in the part description right? You might actually get something.

But like with this hover thing, the easiest thing to do is just go have a look. Look that one's obviously got two double-a batteries. You can see there, that one's got two - I can't see what's going on there. It looks like it's one of those optional things.

one of those t-shaped cases which I really like. that one kind of looks like it's three, but actually if you look at the back humps there, it's actually four and that one actually has in the part number There you can see it's got four. so SRH 75 is the model number. Then you've got four double A in there.

so that actually gives it away. So we just keep scrolling down here. Scroll on down here. trying to get lucky.

You always try and get lucky in this business. That one's got four double A's by the looks of it. and really, you couldn't really search for the description. The parametric search is much better.

For this, I wouldn't go into digi-key and search enclosure three Double A's for example, so that's probably not going to cut the mustard. But ah, you finally get down here and oh, we got lucky. Look three, Count up. One, two, Three.

Triple A's awesome. This one down here, it looks like what's the difference? Is it just color? Yeah, it might just be Color ones, ones, yellow, ones green. These are from our bobbler enclosures I Haven't actually used bottler before, but as you'll see, there's no. there's not many of them and there.

But we got lucky we got a three triple a job' here. So if we go in there and open that puppy up and have a look and of course we can call up Yes! See, here's why you wouldn't find this in a I am war? Would you find it? No, but just tells your battery compartment Triple-a So nowhere in any of the searchable descriptions or anything like that expanded description or whatever it does it mention three Triple-a so you wouldn't have found this if you just did the digi-key search like in the top bar up here. you know, typing enclosure three times Triple-a Oh I haven't tried it. so I don't fall out of myself.

most he'll get you every time. Anyway, let's have a look at the data sheet, shall we? The Boss Streamlined series: I Rather like to look at this and it looks like you can get on Windows or no Windows or is that just custom machining. Most of these manufacturers will do custom machining and stuff for you or at least a lot of them will. and of course you can get completely custom solution for this.

You can go to find some manufacturer on Aliexpress or whatever who does cases and though you know mouldings aren't that but I think he just wants like you know, 10, 20, 50 or something. you know you wouldn't bother. So you're going to try and find an off-the-shelf solution first. And sure enough, you go down here without battery compartment.

So you can get them with or without battery compartments. So once we have the model numbers and stuff like that, then we can go and do a deeper search on digi-key and mouse. or if it didn't have something that we had available so you can get them with Windows without windows. That's great with Luke for attaching lanyard.

Kind of like this case. Kind of need sloped like that. You know if you're sitting on your bench. If you've got a nice angle like LCD, it just angles up nicely for you.

That's rather neat. So we've got another model here without battery compartment. With battery compartment. There you go: the BS 401 No.

BS this case. This one's got three micro triple-a batteries in it and it's available in graphite gray like gray and silver. Thank you very much for playing. So there you go.

It was that the Bf 403. Yes, the BS 403. So you know BS 403 you can see what other ones are available, perhaps boxes? No, they've only got the one. Okay, there you go, Bs 403.

So there you go. That's it. I just want to show you that and how like I kind of done well I didn't get lucky I went sort of like a systematic approach through. but I you know I got lucky in that digi-key happen to have one you know usually most you'll get you and I you know your search digi-key expensively and you'll find that only also have it or only funny I'll have it or something else like that.

Or if the big suppliers like your mousy mousy digi-key and finals don't have it, then you have to go through systematically through. You know I would go through you know I'd spend hours and hours many times I spent like day and you know our whole day just searching box manufacturers for that perfect case because that perfect case can actually make or break your product. You know, because when you're going to go fully custom, it's like an open slate and it's hard and design engineers love it when they have a constraint to work to and if you choose a nice enclosure you you found that looks good then you can actually design around that enclosure of than you know having just open slather I'd do anything and get it all custom. So anyway yeah, I would you know go through not not systematically I go to the ones that I'm familiar with.

You know I've use like half a dozen of these suppliers you know extensively, these manufacturers expensively and you just go through like that because sometimes that's the only way to do it and most of my going to have. You know really good parametric searches on their webpage and stuff like that. You know often they're a bit clunky and very 90s based web design and things like that. They're not exactly user-friendly but there you go.

We got lucky on that digit key search and like he was messaging me on Google Hangouts and it was. Only you know it only took me a couple of minutes to find that but now if waffled on for 10 minutes I wish I had like started and did that live but I cheated I already knew that there was one did you key because I found it but that's basically the procedure that I took there first. once I realized that going here I realized I wasn't getting very far here so I went I thought yeah, why not I'll give Digi-key a shot. It was unlikely to work, but it did.

We got lucky and how good are just photos? This was back before the days of the web when you actually had printed catalogs. It had the printed funnel and IRS catalogs. who didn't have the digi-key catalogs here in Australia because it wasn't a thing, didn't have online e-commerce and things like that. So too you know they didn't have the easy ordering in Australia they do now.

So final an IRS catalogs that was that was the Bible you know and you had that. it was dog-eared on your desk and you had multiple copies because people would always be still in it and you just flick through the the catalog and you took like the photos would be everything you search for stuff with photos and that was the way you know you like when you got the new catalog it there all day just flicking through all that looks oh that looks interesting and seeing that before. what can I use that for what project can I use that in and stuff like that? but yeah nowadays it's all on the web but photos still reign supreme like this. You can just go through here really quick like this like that is.

you know that's how fast you're searching becomes and there's only two pages of search. it takes me in, you know, 30 seconds to scan through these to see that Digi-key have or don't have something. But you've got to be careful because not every single item in digi-key and Mouser and finals and all the rest is properly categorized with these feet with the with these features populated and as I said, they could be under different names and stuff like that so you can often come a gutter thereby not choosing the right name, you might miss something or whatever parameter it is. it's just there's countless permutations of this for all different types of parts, but that's enclosure searching for You got a bit lucky there.

but yeah, that's a bit unusual requirement. So if you know of any other three double-a or three triple a handheld enclosures, please leave it in the comments cuz my friend would probably like to do it. Let's do all the work for him. Awesome! Anyway, this isn't a regular video, just a single take.

Blab Anyway, hope you enjoyed it. Parametric searching Fun. Catch you next time.