EYE ON NPI - ACES Group’s Vertical MicroSD Card Connectors

Adafruit Industries

This week's EYE ON NPI is "aces", literally! It's ACES Group’s Vertical MicroSD Card Connectors (https://www.digikey.com/en/product-highlight/a/aces-group/vertical-microsd-card-connector), a great way to increase your enclosure design flexibility, maybe even improve BOM costs by not requiring a separate PCB for mechanical stability. MicroSD cards are a great way to add gigabytes of data storage for low cost and user-serviceability: they're available at just about any store - even grocery stores! Cards are usually under $10, and DigiKey stocks a huge variety of speeds and sizes. (https://www.digikey.com/short/b43p5rzq) The ACES card sockets come in two styles. The MSDV-2008-AKA0T01 (https://www.digikey.com/short/b449j9p5) is minimal, with the smallest size but no push-push eject - instead you have to pull the card out. The MSDV-2108-BK33T (https://www.digikey.com/short/7hnwrbd1) has push-push eject so it's easier to remove cards, but the overall package is much larger. The minimal one is also less expensive, about $1 in quantity whereas the fancy one is $1.60. Both come with the promise of accessing a MicroSD card at a perpendicular angle from the PCB - a design we've never seen before in a micro SD card holder! Historically, we've only seen and used 'right angle' style like the MSD-6-A from CUI (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/cui-devices/MSD-6-A/21797113) - and DigiKey stocks tons of variants of MicroSD sockets (https://www.digikey.com/short/zfn2rcm3) such as hinged, push-pull, even super-skinny (https://blog.adafruit.com/2022/07/26/the-great-search-skinny-micro-sd-card-holder-for-raspberry-pi-cowbells-thegreatsearch-digikey-adafruit/). But, this is the first and only one we've ever seen that is 'vertical' not right angle, with all pins brought out plus card detection. The design is well thought-out with through-hole contacts plus 3 extra-wide mechanical stabilizers and a flat plastic seat so that customers jamming cards in off-angle won't tear the pads off. We've already picked up some of each to make a breakout board so folks can add these to their prototype design, but you shouldn't wait on us! If you want to add these two unique microSD sockets to your design - order from DigiKey today! They have both the MSDV-2008-AKA0T01 (https://www.digikey.com/short/b449j9p5) and MSDV-2108-BK33T (https://www.digikey.com/short/7hnwrbd1) in stock right now for immediate shipment. Place your order right now and you'll be integrating the new ACES Group’s Vertical MicroSD Card Connectors (https://www.digikey.com/en/product-highlight/a/aces-group/vertical-microsd-card-connector) by tomorrow afternoon.