NEW PRODUCTS – Adafruit TRINKET – Mini Microcontroller – TRINKET 3.3V and TRINKET 5.5V versions. Trinket may be small, but do not be fooled by its size! It’s a tiny microcontroller board, built around the Atmel ATtiny85, a little chip with a lot of power. We wanted to design a microcontroller board that was small enough to fit into any project, and low cost enough to use without hesitation. Perfect for when you don’t want to give up your expensive dev-board and you aren’t willing to take apart the project you worked so hard to design. It’s our lowest-cost arduino-IDE programmable board!
The Attiny85 is a fun processor because despite being so small, it has 8K of flash, and 5 I/O pins, including analog inputs and PWM ‘analog’ outputs. We designed a USB bootloader so you can plug it into any computer and reprogram it over a USB port just like an Arduino. In fact we even made some simple modifications to the Arduino IDE so that it works like a mini-Arduino board. You can’t stack a big shield on it but for many small & simple projects the Trinket will be your go-to platform.
There are two versions of the Trinket. One is 3V and one is 5V. Both work the same, but have different operating logic voltages. Use the 3V one to interface with sensors and devices that need 3V logic, or when you want to power it off of a LiPo battery. The 3V version should only run at 8 MHz. Use the 5V one for sensors and components that can use or require 5V logic. The 5V version can run at 8 MHz or at 16MHz by setting the software-set clock frequency.
Here are some useful specifications!
- ATtiny85 on-board, 8K of flash, 512 byte of SRAM, 512 bytes of EEPROM
- Internal oscillator runs at 8MHz, but can be doubled in software for 16MHz
- USB bootloader with a nice LED indicator looks just like a USBtinyISP so you can program it with AVRdude (with a simple config modification) and/or the Arduino IDE (with a few simple config modifications)
- Mini-USB jack for power and/or USB uploading, you can put it in a box or tape it up and use any USB cable for when you want to reprogram.
- We really worked hard on the bootloader process to make it rugged and foolproof, this board wont up and die on you in the middle of a project!
- ~5.25K bytes available for use (2.75K taken for the bootloader)
- Available in both 3V and 5V flavors
- On-board 3.3V or 5.0V power regulator with 150mA output capability and ultra-low dropout. Up to 16V input, reverse-polarity protection, thermal and current-limit protection.
- Power with either USB or external output (such as a battery) – it’ll automatically switch over
- On-board green power LED and red pin #1 LED
- Reset button for entering the bootloader or restarting the program. No need to unplug/replug the board every time you want to reset or update!
- 5 GPIO – 2 shared with the USB interface. The 3 independent IO pins have 1 analog input and 2 PWM output as well. The 2 shared IO pins have 2 more analog inputs and one more PWM output.
- Hardware I2C / SPI capability for breakout & sensor interfacing.
- Works with many basic Arduino libraries including Adafruit Neopixel!
- Mounting holes! Yeah!
- Really really small.
- Dimensions: 1.2″ x 0.6″ x 0.2″ / 31mm x 15.5 x 5mm , 1.85 grams (no headers).
You can get TRINKET 3.3V here and you can get TRINKET 5.5V. They’re each $7.95 !
These appear to be exactly what I’ve been looking for.
Compared to the Digispark TRINKET is way betters and costs less!
The Digispark is an Attiny85 based microcontroller development board similar to the Arduino line, only cheaper, smaller, and a bit less powerful. With a whole host of shields to extend its functionality and the ability to use the familiar Arduino IDE the Digispark is a great way to jump into electronics, or perfect for when an Arduino is too big or too much.
http://digistump.com/products/1
Can these use the v-usb library?
Do these support v-usb?
the bootloader is V-USB and its likely we can get V-USB working as a user program but we have not tried yet!
Oh boy! I’m hoping to create a K.I.S. glowing holiday ornament using the 3.3V Trinket (origami-paper or 3d-printed diffuser), which will probably then become a solder-and-customize workshop for the Seattle-area! 😀
Do you guys have any idea when the 3.3V Trinkets will be back in stock? Also, hoping the maker-group likes the prototype, is there any way to make sure 20-40 of them could be ordered at once? (we usually only have a good idea of the attendance/interest in our workshops about 1-2 weeks ahead of time)
Keep up the great work!
EDIT: I see that on the full page for the 3.3V Trinket it has an estimate of 5-10 days, so that question is answered (my question came from seeing them out of stock on the search page). Also, the meetups are monthly, so the absolute soonest I’d buy a large order is about a month from now (and more likely a full two months).
Also, the pictures of the Trinket stuck in a small breadboard just got me to realize that it might even be possible to create a solderless-option for those that are adverse to handling hot objects! (hopefully size/durability envy would kick in when they see what their soldering peers make… just need to trick more people trading skills!)
These seem like they’d be good for developing a bridge for interfacing NeoPixels to a RasPi, maybe slaved via SPI or I2C? (You should have just enough free pins if you don’t bother providing MISO feedback.)
UPDATE: And they’re now back in stock, much more quickly than expected! I’ll just order a few to try them out…
How many neopixels will this be able to drive?
Tanner: Close to 150, if every last byte of RAM is used. Code usually needs a little working space of its own though, so let’s say ‘up to 100’ for most cases.
This is really cute! Can someone tell me the power draw of the 3v version at 8 mhz, when running a busy loop doing a little arithmetic? Is it possible to underclock it to decrease power? Thanks!