What is parametric searching, how is it useful, and how to best use it.
Dave answers a viewer question and hunts down the best microcontroller for the job, explaining and demonstrating parametric search engines in the process.
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Hi, let's have a look at component parametric search in because it's a very important aspect in electronics design, product design and I've talked about and demonstrate a parametric search in lots of videos over the years, but I had a search in my videos and I could not find one where I did a video specifically on parametric searching, so let's take a look at it. This was prompted by a email from a viewer: I'm working on a project I'm looking at a number of different microcontroller suppliers I am now dialed down to two suppliers microchip and T I am working on making a project that will utilize you are playing ASCII text. All that sort of stuff require ten user inputs, ten outputs represented on lead. So pretty simple requirement as each button is pressed corresponding the LED turns on.

It's a very simple project, but I hate to say they can't find a decent micro with enough memory number of I/o UART capable in a decent price. The cheapest I found was around four dollars twenty US I Remember you had posted a video regarding cheap one time programming micros for like pennies so I figured it last. You want to hopefully have something in mind to help me out. Here are the requirements: 256 K in memory I have no clue why you'd need 256 K of memory for is a simple like UART thing and input/output mapping and I that's even with you know, the most bloated sea or other language possible I like I just don't see it anyway.

but let's run with that shall we? Number of I/o at least 25? Fair enough. Which rules out like 16 pin dips and things like that you're looking at probably in that you might be able to get away with say, a 28 pin dip. for example, Communication sports you are an SPI. They pretty much come standard with most things and we're searching for the cheapest possible price.

And this is a very common requirement in electronics design is that you're searching for price. You've decided Okay I need a microcontroller with these specifications or II need. This part doesn't matter what it is. I've done one with us selecting enclosures for example.

So you've got a list of requirements and often what you're searching for is either the cheapest price or or the best availability the most stock. You know, stuff like that and but it doesn't have to be like that. Other components you might be use parametric search for finding a particular value of a parameter. for example, like if you're searching MOSFETs for example, you might want to search for the on resistance of the MOSFET You might be looking for the lowest on resistance versus you know, gate drive voltage and you know all sorts of stuff like that.

So there's countless different examples of parametric searching on components, but we'll just stick for microcontrollers here just to help this viewer out. And as a classic example of trying to find the cheapest part possible for the job. So what is parametric searching? Well, it's searching? for a component based on parameters, hence the name parametric search and this is a very common term in the industry. Classic one to throw around in a job interview, by the way, Trust me.
So virtually every component you can think of has parameters available for it. whether it's a microcontroller with all the parameters that we're going to see here, whether it's a MOSFET, whether it's a humble resistor for example, can have a ton of parameters In fact, I'll show you that if we just go into surface mount resistance, for example, look at all these filters available. We can search by manufacturer that's a parameter. We can search by the type of packaging depending on whether or not we want full reels for your pick-and-place machine, or whether you're in one table with you want tube or just cut tape or bulk or whatever it is or a partial manufacturers reel or whatever it is, You can be searching by whether or not it's an active component, whether or not it's our obsolete.

For example, the Series in the resistance of course, the tolerance, the power, the composition, the type of the resistor features look anti Sofer that meets automotive grade things like that, and the temperature coefficient. Of course, the operating temperature range can be important. The package in case type I love Milf you know I love Milf and the size, dimensions, the height, the number of terminals on it, the FIR the failure rate like the mean time between failure rate, Stuff like that all of these are parameters. simple resistor, let alone a more complex part.

So how do you do a parametric search? Well, there's many different ways to do it. A one I Often use is digi-key for example, there are a big catalog supplier Mouser is another one element14 any of your catalog supplies RS Components They all have these parametric searches and there's some are a bit better than others, but not universally. It depends on what type of part is searching from whether or not they might have the the parameter you need. You might find that one supplier as a parametric search doesn't have the particular parameter you need, but another one might.

so you might have to use various ones depending on your needs at the time. And there's other websites like Octo Part and Find Chips for example. These ones have parametric search in them as well. Here we go.

We're in microcontrollers and we can do all sorts of searches and the advantage of both these types of websites like Octo part. we just start out by finding price and then they added parametric search in. and the catalog supplies like your Digi keys your mouse as your finals in your RS there and your even your like big-time suppliers like Arrow and things like that, more sort of industrial supplies. They'll have our parametric searches as well, so there's dozens of different places you can go to for parametric search.

The good thing about the catalog suppliers and the other websites like Auto Part is they search many different manufacturers. So in this case we want to search Microchip and Texas Instruments because our viewer has narrowed it down to those two for whatever reason and that's fine. but you may not care, but it's going to depend upon your requirements about what you're searching for. and so that's a good thing as you can search many different manufacturers.
But let's say that we did know that we wanted to narrow it down to Microchip here. Well, we can go into products here, microcontrollers and micro processors. Let's say we knew we wanted an 8-bit microcontroller for example. Well, we can go in here 8-bit to pick em see use here we go parametric search it's on their website.

Some manufacturers websites are easier to find stuff than others, but it takes a little while. but bingo where it bewildered by. There's a scroll bar down here for a reason. Look at all of these parameters.

Now the Men Factories websites can often be better than your digi keys and your Mouse's and all your other ones. They might have a more comprehensive parameters that you can search from. You can see the Microchip website here has product part number documents 5k pricing. so if you wanted to search for price, you could do that and look even the cheapest, the most expensive 5k price in Microchip part is a dollar Ninety nine for the sixteen pick.

Yeah, this is the sixteen yeah the 8 bit series. So I'm sure we could find a part in there that probably did the business. So I think we're already a well ahead straight off the bat. but look at these ABC's ABCs with computation for example, if you wanted to do some computing stuff on that number of Dax resolution, internal bandgap, voltage references, it's just Hardware Limit timers, signal measurement timers, math accelerator, angular timer you know for rotational stuff and Class B Hardware I don't know it class P Hardware is that's weird you need CRC You know in hardware you can, it's all in there.

You can search for all these parameters and often you can actually go in and select and deselect so you have a more less cluttered view. Here you can sort of like narrow it down you in fact I think we have. That's just a summary. If we go in and click, show all specs I think we might even have a few more there you go so you can actually tidy those up and pick and choose sometimes.

but you can see how comprehensive parametric searching really is. It's amazing. Anyway, we're going to use Digi-key to search for our microcontroller, so we type in microcontroller at the top. Now here is often a trap.

Sometimes you will choose the wrong category and these parametric searches if you're choosing apart and your date. Sometimes it's not that obvious. You know, it's fairly obvious for microcontrollers, but you if you're searching for a voltage regulator for example, well, is it a voltage regulator or is it a voltage control regulator controller or something like that. There might be little subcategories in there and you may be searching in the wrong category, so you know, Yeah, we have to know your terminology and it's sometimes you can spend all day days just you know, finding the one part doing all these parametric search and might not find on once we're sorry you got to go to another.
You might end up this manufacturer that manufactured the double check that you didn't miss anything because sometimes a part might be so critical to your design that's worth spending days on. For example, if you can shave off say 10 cents per part by choosing the correct part, then if you're making say 10,000 widgets, there's a thousand bucks. That's a thousand bucks in your time that you can spend that's worth you spending that time. And if your time is valued at say 100 bucks an hour, you can spend 10 hours searching or five hours say, searching for that one part.

You're still going to be ahead and I'll just show you that category thing with that voltage regulators I was talking about. Look, you got linear DC to DC switching regulators, but then you've got switching controllers so depends on whether or not the regulators usually you know has a building pass transistor, all that sort of stuff. but like as switching controller might have an external one and there might be just various categories. you know, linear plus Switching down here a part might be listed in there and it may not be listed in another because there are errors in these websites in terms of listing parts and things like that.

It's very common, so don't just rely on the one a website to do it. even. you might even find issues in a manufacturer's web's own website, so just be careful. Okay, so let's type in microcontroller.

Let's go into embedded microcontrollers here and it's given us just some basic ones. At the top, you'll notice that we've got seventy seven thousand, eight hundred, and sixty-four microcontrollers on digi-key so we're going to first of all, sort down into microchip and which will include Atmel Now you'll notice that at Mel is not there anymore and we want TI because our viewer has said that they want that and you'll notice that our 77-thousand has gone down to 7,000 just over 7,000 parts so we can apply the filter on that. You can even do them all at once. or you can sort of like slowly narrow down I like this because it tells you how many parts you've got.

left, right and then we can go in and we can chew. you know we didn't say anything about architecture or anything like that, so we don't really care. So you might want to search for active parts. For example, because you don't want to choose an obsolete part for a new design.

so look, there's 1,300 I Love how it does this. Live 1390 obsolete parts, so likely you know you want to be real careful if you're choosing an obsolete part. So you might want to search just for active parts. and it's lowered it from seven thousand to four thousand Eight hundred.
Some of them are just discontinued, a digi-key which is no big deal, they just decided not to carry it anymore or something like that. So I Really, you know I wouldn't be too concerned about that. there's last time by, for example, like it's about to become obsolete and you better buy them up in huge volume now. otherwise you won't be able to buy it anywhere or not.

For new designs, it means they'll phase it out. They'll make it obsolete in a couple of years time. They're just sort of like warning you, but these are in parts statuses You remember Somebody had to enter in all this data right? So it can often be wrong, so just be wary about doing something like that. So I really wouldn't typically go with an active one once I've chosen found my part I'd go to the manufacturers website and and get it right from the horse's mouth whether or not it's a new part.

So that's how I generally do it. Okay, so clear that and we'll go more filters. So remember how we said we needed at least 25? I Oh, that was a high level requirement. Okay, so we absolutely needed that.

so we need at least that and you can hold down shift and like do like a whole array of them like that. Or you can just hold down control and just select like oddball ones like that if you really wanted. So we're going to go for 25 because they didn't say didn't say an upper limit like size of the package. These requirements worked like an incredibly basic.

like there's no upper limit on the number of pins. There's no whether or not it's SMD or through-hole We'll just assume it's SMD or whatever and you know, so no major or package size. You know I need it in an Esso package because that's all I can solder, You know I don't want any of that t stop rubbish or BGA or any you know stuff like that. There's just tons of option.

Anyway, we need at least 25. Okay, so we've got with 2500. we've got five and a half thousand parts remaining so we'll apply our filter down here. Sorry for having my head in that corner in this corner because I probably my eyes are looking somewhere else if I put it over there in that corner over there I'm bound to miss something.

so it's just the way the camera works and my eyes work and all that. Anyway, the other was 256 K a memory. There's no speed requirement. where's our program memory sighs? Okay, I am no idea why you need 256 K for that.

but hey, we'll work with that. And it didn't say whether or not that was bytes or whether or not that was program words. I'm going to assume it's program words. So so in this particular case, like there we go, like this one might be 256 kilobytes program size, but because it's a 16-bit micro, it needs two of those per words.
so it's actually only 128 K So we're just going to say 256 K we can go all the way to 4 Meg Wow That's pretty serious business, but we still got seven 800 microcontrollers from just these two manufacturers. This is insane, but it's not actually 1700 different parts. The parts might be like slightly different package variations, temperature variations like you know, military or commercial grade, and stuff like that. So yeah, it's you know.

don't get too excited about the variance, right? It didn't say anything about RAM size. no worries. So we're sorted by I/o and you'll notice that Look, it is now only 26. I Owe upwards.

25 was an oddball number so I just wasn't there and we just do flash we probably don't want FF RAM for example. so you know, like you don't have to do that, but we'll just do that for kicks shall we? Now as in terms of UART and SPI, this is where it's harder on digi-key and other web sites. They sort of like combine them. look you've got a like you know it's got like can bus look it's like all it's combined one and you can easily miss ones like oh I need a UART So we need a UART and SPI but we have to go through and manually.

If we wanted to search for that on digi-key we'd have to go in and manually search for all and select all the ones that had there those particular peripherals so you know and that's different to your peripherals over here. So yeah, I generally wouldn't search for that. Most micros are gonna have a UART and an SPI these days, so I wouldn't even bother searching for that. but you can so if you really wanted to do that I'd probably go it back over to the manufacturers website over here and they'd probably have it separately and there we go.

Yep, they have it separately UART and SPI. So there you go. We've got our parametric search data 256 K of memory and in fact input kilobits. but it doesn't matter.

256 K of memory 25 IO pins minimum UART and SPI So I did almost guarantee they'll all have SPI. So anyway, and we were good to go. Yep, so you'll find that this is all. Updates are live in the background.

So we've got 1681 parts. so we go down here and here's all our parts. Now what's the other thing we wanted to search for? Price: We didn't get a volume. There's no volume price, but let's say that we wanted to search for thousand Quantity volume.

You don't have to do it up here, but they've They've added this in that recent years. View Prices at a thousand volume. Okay, so it will give us prices in this list down here, not of one of quantity. It'll give us the thousand price quantity.

So there it is at Quantity one thousand. Okay, whereas that was different before and you can't just go back by the way which is handy so it whereas before. so yeah this column down here that was just the one off price. but if you go for the thousand up here then it will give you the thousand of quantity in all of those.
Now the other thing is you might go well. I'm not gonna design in a part if I can't get stock at least from digi-key G's You know that means if you can't get it from there, it's probably you know, a bit obscure. so we can select in stock here. For example, you can select ones that only have a datasheet frig's but that's getting a bit.

You know it's getting a bit anal. most of them have a data sheet normally stocking new products, they generally wouldn't touch those, the ROS compliant and on Rose Man that'll just come out in the wash a generally unless you were really strictly searching. and maybe if you wanted one with EDA or CAD modules models, it's all in here. You can see how ridiculously it's almost an unlimited variety of parameters you can search for in a parametric search and that's what it is.

Anyway, in stock. We're now down to 331. You see how before we were get get rid of that 1681 we got all excited. Oh wow, we have so many to choose from are in stock.

not sorry, he only got 331 left. So let's apply our filter and let's go down. and we only get the thousand or quality. Now you see.

So there it is. Three dollars eighty nine. So we want to search for the minimum price. Let's go Wow There you go.

Search for actually reasonably expensive because it's the memory that's going to do it. Memory is expensive and we'll search for that in a minute. but our viewer said four dollars Twenty U.s. right? So if we remove our thousand of quantity, let's go down to a hundred price for example.

that's quite reasonable. There you go. Five dollars, something like that. so the cheapest one? Yeah, so actually I was a hose.

A bit surprised. There you go. So the 256 K of memory is really done. Do you know that's really dunnison.

So a search for price here. and the other annoying thing is you'll find that once we've gone to that 256 K of memory, look at all these pain in the ass packages they can't like. There are really large packages even though we only search for ones with like 25 I owe for example. it's in fact the filters are up here.

It'll actually narrow down number of IOPS Look at this. So if you wanted one with only 20, there's only one. two devices, two devices with 26 pin. Let's see what they there you go and it's a TI part and CF 2849 what on earth is that one? I'm know it's one of the C mm Piccolo series there for example and it's nine bucks, 50 and 11 bucks.

But if you you know if you wanted the smallest pink out with that 256 K a memory like there's no choice. but once again that's just on digi-key You might go if you're desperate and that was your only regret. Yeah you had to fit that requirement then you would like go to search wider number of manufacturers. You go search other parametric search engines.

You go to the manufacturers website. stuff like that. actually this doesn't add up. Look at the size of this package.
that's a 64 lead quad flat-pack and it's only supposed to have 26 I owe pins. So something. Have we got an oopsie in the database here? We might very well have to have so few I/o that you know I know the 64 pin package? It's nuts actually. Nope.

that's genuine. Look at it. there's 64 64 pin PM 26 I owe. Why? What's the actual pin? Yeah, yeah.

Sure enough, the PM logo from profile quad flat-pack Yeah, look, there's tons of pins like VF LOV like PGA two in so a lot of these a 5 and these are like Filter 1, Filter, 2 or whatever it is. So like a team it like it's got yeah, it looks like it's got a separate dedicated JTAG pins and stuff like that. Yeah, so and there's lots of ground and lots of I/o So yeah, you can see why that's only 26 I/o in such a large package. That's just oddball dammit.

Let's hope we find a mistake in the parametric search. So I'm just going to go back here and you can actually use the back button to go back and we're still at our 256 K program memory. Let's say we want to say 32k of program memory. so let's go from 30 to K to 256 K for example.

So let's do that again and we'll serger We still got our number of I/o and we'll find that our prices have significantly changed. So there's our thousand dollar tea. So if you can get by without your 200 and with you doing without your 256 K of memory, search by you see that up arrow there. So each one of these tables you can search by sort by lowest to highest which is what the up arrow means or search from highest to lowest price.

So our highest price micro in that at a thousand of quantity is two thousand, eight hundred and three dollars. It's a development board and well done ti fear: $2,800 Msp430 Frm development board. Give me a break anyway. But now look, they do actually have a part and it's m320 fo Oh, it's still got the the cage on it that holds the chip.

Oh, isn't that sex on a stick? Oh that's worth every one of the three hundred and thirty six dollars. but you may have a requirement for that so you know. anyway. so that's that.

You know. then eighty bucks. There's other parts like Msp430 for 82 bucks, 60 pound, 20 NK flake G's G's on what that personally delivered by a Graybeard. That's that's ridiculous.

Anyway, we search for lowest price upwards and you'll see that when we search for 32k up our prices came down to a dollar. forty in a thousand volume and there's it. Looks like T is the winner there. I don't see microchip match in that.

and there is a plugin. By the way, it used to be like a Grease Monkey plugin and there was a I even used it for years, but it used to be a very nice digi-key plugin that allows I allowed you to search for add more variety to your parametric searches and stuff like that. but I don't know I don't know why I stopped using that and it may be like digi-key and Mouser and all the rest just keep getting better and better and better in their parametric searches. Ah, did I get something wrong? Are we only searching for TI I think I think I go sorry about that microchip I didn't press control microchip and TI sorry about that.
we'll just 32 to 256 K minimum 25 IO Let's not go silly. you know let's go up to 80 pins or something like that. It's not going nuts. Okay, there we go.

Search for price. There's our thousand off quantity. Hey Look at this. There you go.

A microchip part. ATR That's the that's an Atmel one and I'm Cortex-m Zero for example, that's 51 cents and that's got 64 K of a flash. Surely that's more than enough, but that's in a pain the ass micro. BGA package.

You don't want that so you know. Yeah, you might want this. nice green. There we go.

Nice quad flat-pack down there. 32 k a flash memory. You know it's 82 cents. They've got them in stock 222.

It's not a huge number of stock and as I said, like all of them have Urs and SPI and stuff like that. So that's you know. it's pretty much a given these days, almost guaranteed. So you know there's plenty of options in there.

Look, I can go through until the cows come home and search for the perfect microcontroller for this application, but quite frankly, we need more information on just that. That's that's way too broad and information let the cheapest possible. it's just. and and I got a question the 256 K requirement in there for such a simple thing.

But anyway, I hope you can see how powerful these parametric searches are. And once again, and like I said, it different totally depends on your requirements, but if you were, you know, really spending hours and hours or even days on parametric search in one part because it was critical to some aspect of your design. then you know you might not be searching on just the one website. I'd go over once.

I've narrowed down a few manufacturers that I wanted that might make the types of parts that I'm interested in. I'll just go and double check their websites and then you know you might see you might search because your price is once again absolutely critical. You might go over to a Chinese Source website and you might be happy with one of the obscure brands for example that we've looked at before. No, I'll do it no thank you I don't want to do that, but if we go over here and have a look at that processes, we've got all these embedded processes and controllers.

We can go in here, but unfortunately it looks like LCSC doesn't have a parametric search engine available across multiple manufacturers like this. like we might be able to go into, say, Microchip which has a lot of parts right And then we get our parametric search. but you can't do it across the different manufacturers which is what you can do on your mouse or your digi-key and your arrows and your octo paths and your find chips and all those types of websites. So now quite often you use parametric searching to actually find manufacturers of parts that you didn't know about.
You might have some obscure think oh, I need oh I know I need one of these parts right? I don't know who makes those? You go to your catalog suppliers and Bingo! you can find all of your manufacturers in the lists down here and you do your parametric search and all these manufacturers pop up once you've never heard of in your might go oh I've never heard of Zai Lee I've never heard of Wizna, X-mas who's that? you know and then you go check them out. It's actually quite a real good way. You just spend all your idle hours parametric searching and you find all these manufacturers and other obscure requirements and and parameters of parts that you never knew about. and you might find some obscure parameter in here and you go.

I Have no idea what that means and what that aspect of a MOSFET means I show you go into MOSFETs Go to singles down here. These are all the mosfet manufacturers. Not necessarily all of them wouldn't have like they're you know you're more obscure Chinese that supplies and stuff like that 49,000 odd MOSFETs are. Look at that stupid little four bump BG a rubbish flip finger bugger off again.

What's a Gann Fann What's a gallium nitride right? You might not know what that is so you might go. Oh, I'll go and check out that technology I've never heard of that that's absolutely fantastic. And these these parameters down here. Yeah, you know you might I would Vgs is you I Know we might want an unresisting say I talked about before.

You might want the absolute lowest on resistance, but you might go oh, what's this gate charge I don't know what that is. Go Google it. find out. input capacitance.

you know there's a whole bunch of stuff. Then you might go oh, what's a super junction? what's depletion mode I Don't know anything about the current sense in what? like you just go in search I supplied only in passivated I form is solder. bumps are great for your mobile phone, but you know, so you might search for current sensing. For example, there's 38 parts down there that do current sensing and look at that stud packages and that was very studly.

Oh yeah, from exes you might never have heard of. Exes For example, Next, Spiria, so you know. Look, you can just go in and have a look at this data sheet because you didn't know what current sensing is. For example, and n-channel trench FET Standard level fit.

Boom Much electrostatically robust and Bingo! you might go down and you might see why. Does it have all these pins? It's only a MOSFET No. Look, it's got a Kelvin Sense pin for example. Perfect for current sense applications.

You've got your current sense resistor down in your source down here. I've done videos on that and it's got an I sense pin as well. Absolutely brilliant. You might not have known these things even existed.
these obscure parts that actually tap it off right on the die which is absolutely fantastic. and and that might Neum That might give you an idea for your product. it might go up well. I Can add extra capability to my product cuz I found a part that did you know this obscure thing I didn't even know existed? That's the power of searching through parametric searches.

So you know if you wonder why myself and other you know experienced designers know about all these parts and all these things. It's because we're spent you know, like, countless years doing parametric searches and you just find all sorts of skewer stuff. It's a great way to learn, but I Know everyone wants to know what is the cheapest microcontroller. well at least on digi-key here that's in stock that has 256 K of program memory.

Here you go I'm searching all the manufacturers and bingo was sorted by a thousand of quantity. Price: We're talking 81 cents Winner winner chicken dinner to microchip their same three Arm Cortex-m three chip. There you go And yes it does have the UI yeah you are an SPI it's only 81 since it's in stock. Absolutely fantastic.

So microchip when their who's the next winner and ST micro the 32 Fr oh three. Oh that's a fine choice. twice the price there. so you know I mean if you you're really desperately needed, that was your only requirement I need 256 K of program memory and just some Iona UART And the thing at the 81 cents.

And yes, it's got 34 io. So I'm actually not sure why this one didn't show up before. That's interesting. There's something.

There's a glitch in the matrix. there's a glitch in the product parametric search here like you could go in and try and figure out the reason why it's not showing up and everything. But yeah, I mean we were searching microchip before and that wasn't showing in 256 K and the minimum number of I/o and stuff like that and it wasn't like boy you can get a 14 pin io o 14 io. That's not the number of pins but you can get you can sort by package of course.

Here You go look: I can give a 16 a 16-pin 1 in and with 256 K or let yeah, at least 256 K a flash. Nice. Who's that? That's a maxim. There you go if you want 256 K a flash in a little bumpy BGA knock yourself out.

So anyway, that's just right. There is an interesting example I Just like fell into this one I decided to do the extra search if I didn't do that I Might have thought that Microchip didn't have anything available. you know, under with 256 K a flash memory that with the I/o that we wanted like in that the original. Maybe there's an error in the parameters or whatever it was that prevented that coming up.

That we might have found that if we went over to the Microchip website and did the parametric search on on there. but yeah, it just popped out of the woodwork where it didn't before. So it's a good example of where you can come a gutter run off with your tail between your legs thinking that oh I've got to use a you know, a three or four dollar micro and nope if you under winner winner chicken dinner. That's why it pays to.
Sometimes you know spend an extra few minutes, few extra hours, maybe an extra day searching for the right part. And of course we're not even done yet. I mean yeah, I can spend hours just searching for that basic parameter 256 K micro to find the absolute cheapest damn thing on the market? Go down the rabbit hole. So there you go I hope you found that useful I Hope I Answered Simon's question well I didn't really answer it, but you know parametric searching I Thought it'd be a nice way to do a dedicated video on.

it's a very useful thing. Highly recommended and there's tons of nuances and variations of this. It's practically infinite, but you know there that some rules are: Don't just trust one website and and ultimately go back to the manufacturers Parametric search or don't believe things like you know it's it's discontinued or something like that. Only trust the manufacturers.

You know if something is really critical, if a parameter is really critical, go back to the Horse's Mouth. Go back to the manufacturers website and their latest datasheet to get exactly right. because you know it's very common to find errors in parametric searches and you know if you having a bad day Murphy will get you every time. So hope you enjoyed that you did.

Please give it a big thumbs up and as always you can discuss down below and over on the Eevee blog forum. Thanks to all my patron and new subscribe star supporters. Catch you next time.

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By YTB

18 thoughts on “Eevblog #1180 – component parametric search tutorial”
  1. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars François Revol says:

    Once you've started filtering you may want to remove the search term under the filter, because sometimes components miss it in the description even if they are in the category. Probably not for uCs but who knows, you may miss the right part because of that.

  2. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Larry AK0Z says:

    How do you use a constant current power supply. Why would you isolate the earth to ground. Why would you use power supplies in series or parallel?

  3. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Hola! Cameron says:

    5 minutes in and I've already learned a lot! Great, informative video (as always). I recommend your channel all the time to people looking to learn about electronics and electrical engineering. There's not another YouTuber out there with such a huge variety of informative videos about both broad and niche topics!

  4. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Cubeist Games says:

    Part of the issue with these searches are inaccuracies and variances on how manufacturers specify stuff, making it very hit and miss.

  5. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Cubeist Games says:

    If the OQ was accurate, That is 256Kb BITS – Little b (so 32K byes).

  6. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars roidroid says:

    i wish these parametric searches had values for max current through chip, and max current through an IO-pin.
    Would save me a lot of time :T

  7. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars DAVID GREGORY KERR says:

    what about an Arduino MEGA PC or a ST MCU

  8. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars ve1arn says:

    Hi Dave! Great tutorial, thanks. I wonder if the reason that chip didn't show up the first time is because it shows as obsolete, when I believe your original search was for active parts? Or, maybe I missed something, which is more likely. 🙂

  9. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars CaptainDangeax says:

    I'm found of parametric search. But I narrow my search to Microchip+Atmel because I've got a Pickit3 and a Pickit4, and I narrow my search to DIP or PDIP because it's almost the only ones a hobbyist can easily solder.

  10. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Luscus says:

    My major supplier is RS. I LOVE their parametric search.
    And on top of that free freight. I live in Geraldton, WA (500 odd km's north of Perth). Toll have my parts here from NSW in 3 days max. Love it.

  11. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars mattikaki says:

    What? Was this… a clikcbait ? What is in that thumbnail? Just kidding.

  12. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars urdnal says:

    Hold on, hold on. Mention parametric searching in a job interview? It's actually something noteworthy enough for a job interview??

  13. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Dylan Kirdahy says:

    Viewer: "Dave, I need help finding a part"
    Dave: "No wackers, I'll do it for you, and explain the whole process!"

  14. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Red Squirrel says:

    When I'm really bored at work I sometimes do searches for random stuff. I must really be a nerd. Most people just go on Youtube. My monitor faces the entrance though so I don't have that luxery as it's the first screen people see when they come in our area. At least parametric searching sorta looks work related even though my job is not electronics. 😛

  15. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars kmonyt says:

    I know you mention this half way through the video, but clicking that "in-stock" button on digi-key is the single most important one. This eliminates old parts, obsolete, long lead times(normal lead time for out stock is in MONTHS). Make sure to che ck it!

  16. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Chris Miller says:

    Dave, there's an official DigiKey browser plugin called "advancedsearch" that works in Firefox, Chrome, Edge and Opera. It adds quite a few nice features to DigiKey's search and product pages. Features like checkboxes for what are typically comma-separated lists (hardware peripherals, voltage ranges, etc), column sorting by value instead of alphabetically (100 ohm < 1 Gohm), and datasheet autoloading on product pages. I've been using it for years, since before Ben the original creator was actually hired by DigiKey!

  17. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Hrnek Bezucha says:

    I'd love if you could make a Shenzhen market version of this with all the pros and cons of it. It's a sure thing for all the jellybean parts, passives and LEDs but micros or SPI flash? I don't know…

  18. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Bernd Felsche says:

    Dave; a man of many tangents. 😉

    And the cheapest microcontroller is …. obsolete

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