Circuit Playground Firmata is a new guide in the learning system:
Circuit Playground is Adafruit’s all-in-one Arduino-compatible physical computing board. This tiny board packs a lot of cool hardware like an Arduino-compatible microcontroller, NeoPixels (addressable RGB LEDs), an accelerometer to detect forces, tilting, and taps, sensors for temperature, light, and sound, buttons & capacitive touch inputs, and more. All of these components come preassembled and soldered to the board–you’re ready to start learning and playing with Circuit Playground immediately!
However one challenging aspect for newcomers to programming and hardware is learning how to use programming languages like C++ & C. Higher level programming languages like Python are typically easier for beginners to learn, but can you control Circuit Playground with Python or other high level languages? It turns out that yes you can use high level programming languages with Circuit Playground using a tool called Firmata!
Firmata is a protocol for talking to and controlling Arduino-compatible boards. By programming Circuit Playground with a special Firmata sketch you can control it from Python and other code running on your computer. This greatly reduces the barrier to entry when learning programming and hardware. Just plug Circuit Playground into your computer and start writing Python and other code to control its hardware!