Revision note: As of Friday, August 28th, 2015 these now have unique MAC addresses! That’s great because now you don’t have to worry about using two or more of them at once, handy for people turning these into beacons.
Add Bluetooth capability to your computer super fast with a USB BT 4.0 adapter. This adapter is backwards compatible with v2.1 and earlier, but also supports the latest v4.0/Bluetooth Low Energy. Inside lies a CSR8510 Bluetooth USB host.
We’ve used this with great success on a Windows 7 computer, installing as a ‘generic’ Bluetooth device, but we expect it to work just fine with any modern computer as this chipset is very common. So far we’ve tested it to communicate with Bluetooth data modules only.
Drivers for CSR Bluetooth modules are built into Windows XP/7/8/10 so you do not need to install any software or download anything: other bluetooth drivers or ‘stacks’ such as BlueSoleil are not as good as the Windows stack and will cause problems. Just plug it in and let windows auto-install the BT driver, it may take a few minutes! For Linux, use Bluez which works great, our Pi tutorial will be similar to your favorite distro
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, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, 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.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
