We can’t be send commercial parts to space so we shouldn’t make designs using commercial parts. Here’s an explanation of the part rating scheme: https://www.ti.com/support-quality/certifications-and-standards/part-ratings.html. Remember that passives like resistors and capacitors also need to be rated for automotive applications.
| Type | Rating Name |
|---|---|
| IC | AEC-Q100 |
| Passive | AEC-Q200 |
Except in rare circumstances, your capacitors should look like this. If you need to use an electrolytic, film, tantalum, etc. capacitor you should have a really good reason.
For general resistors, I recommend 0402 if you want practice with the size most people use and 0603 or 0805 if you want something a little easier to solder.
Inductors can be shocking large so watch out for those.
For ICs, make sure you look at the dimensions as well as the pitch (distance between pins). Also, we can’t use BGA packages and packages with the pins sticking out are preferred whenever possible.
A lot of the time, it can be hard to navigate DigiKey’s product index to find the right category for the part you want. One trick I like is that if you can find one part number for the type of part you need- whether it be from Google or from someone else’s design-you can look it up on DigiKey and it’ll show you what category that was in.
