Finding Similar Parts With The Alts Tool
Alts isn’t just for supply chain
Nothing ruins a finished layout like an assembly quote that comes back with a procurement flag.
I’m working on an embedded image processing design around the STM32N6. It uses an accelerometer/gyro to sense its orientation before taking a series of images with an OV5640. For the motion sensing I’d already settled on the LSM6DSMTR which already lives in my PCB component library for applications like this. So when I was drawing the board up, I dropped it in and moved on.
Then, just as the design was wrapping up, our assembly quote came back with a list of part-procurement issues. The LSM6 was one of them. There was no stock anywhere I trusted.
This is about as ordinary a problem as it gets, especially if you do a lot of prototype work. It’s also always frustrating, because now you have to rip out and replace a part you just finished designing in.
The normal fix is a slog. You go to a distributor site, open the category for whatever you’re replacing, and start filtering. It works.. eventually.. But reviewing parts by hand is tedious and a big chunk of the results aren’t even remotely close to what you need. That's especially true when the headline parameters aren’t the whole reason you picked the part in the first place. Maybe it has a specific low power mode that you need, or it plays nicely with a particular sensor. Maybe the differentiator was one of those pesky things that a parametric filter can’t see.
The Zenode Alts tool cuts out the labor intensive part of that search by handing you pre-screened alts to start from. Instead of combing an entire category, you just type in what you’re after including the soft requirements like that low power mode, and it does the disqualifying for you. Let the purpose built EE search engine handle save you hours tab-hopping and datasheet-scrolling so you can focus on the 2-3 parts that actually fit your needs.
My thoughts going in
What actually makes a drop-in a drop-in? Are you protecting the footprint and pinout so you don’t have to rework your layout? Or is it more important to hold the same power requirements, the same IO voltage, and the same interface so your MCU and power tree don’t move? Those are the same search, and they change the answer on which candidate wins a place on your BOM.
Once you know what you’re willing to change, you hand Alts your prime part plus those design considerations and let it find the best fit while you grab a coffee.
My search first turned up the which is an in-family alt that looked great on paper. Alts showed me the package, pinout, power specs, and function were all identical or compatible, and it threw in some extra machine learning features I would have happily used. The only sticking point was that it’s in the same supply hole as my prime. Can’t get it from my preferred distributors so it’s off the list.
