NEW PRODUCT – Arduino Esplora – The Arduino Esplora is a fun new game controller-shaped microcontroller board derived from the popular Arduino Leonardo. What makes the Esplora cool (and a great starter board) is that it has a number of built-in, ready-to-use sensors already on the board, for easy interaction. It’s designed for people who want to get up and running with Arduino without having to learn about the electronics wiring first. For a step-by-step introduction to the Esplora, check out the Getting Started with Esplora guide.
The Esplora has onboard sound and light outputs, and several input sensors, including a joystick, a slider, a temperature sensor, an accelerometer, a microphone, and a light sensor. It also has the potential to expand its capabilities with two Tinkerkit input and output connectors, and a socket for a color TFT LCD screen (coming soon!).
Like the Leonardo board, the Esplora uses an Atmega32U4 AVR microcontroller with 16 MHz crystal oscillator and a micro USB connection capable of acting as a USB client device. Since the Esplora has built-in USB communication; it can appear to a connected computer as a mouse or keyboard, in addition to a virtual (CDC) serial / COM port. Great for making interactive projects super fast! It even comes with a 5 foot long Micro USB cable so you can plug in and go.
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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The Esplora is more hackable than the Arduino team cares to document. The connections may not be well documented but I and others have posted info to allow others to get at functionality if it’s there.
And the Adafruit 1.8" display fits into the right display header perfectly. Along with the Adafruit library, you can have text up in a few minutes. On other Arduinos you’d have to work out which jumper wires go where to do the same thing.
The Esplora is more hackable than the Arduino team cares to document. The connections may not be well documented but I and others have posted info to allow others to get at functionality if it’s there.
And the Adafruit 1.8" display fits into the right display header perfectly. Along with the Adafruit library, you can have text up in a few minutes. On other Arduinos you’d have to work out which jumper wires go where to do the same thing.