Adafruit Holiday Gift Guide 2017: Feather – Flashy Fun Feathers

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Today is Day 4 of our week of gift guides devoted to the Feather! (Check out day 1, day 2 and day 3 coverage) Check out the gift guide below to find the perfect feather add-on for your loved one!


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Adafruit 15×7 CharliePlex LED Matrix FeatherWing – Cool White: You wont be able to look away from the mesmerizing patterns created by this Adafruit 15×7 CharliePlex LED Matrix Display FeatherWing. This 15×7 LED display can be paired with any of our Feather boards for a beautiful, bright grid of 105 charlieplexed LEDs. It even comes with a built-in charlieplex driver that is run over I2C.

We carry these FeatherWings in five vivid colors – this is the Cool White matrix.

What is particularly nice about this Wing is the I2C LED driver chip has the ability to PWM each individual LED in a 15×7 grid so you can have beautiful LED lighting effects, without a lot of pin twiddling. Simply tell the chip which LED on the grid you want lit, and what brightness and it’s all taken care of for you. You get 8-bit (256 level) dimming for each individual LED.

The IS31FL3731 is a nice little chip – and it runs happily over 3.3V power. Inside is enough RAM for 8 separate frames of display memory so you can set up multiple frames of an animation and flip them to be displayed with a single command. Since it uses I2C, it takes up only the SDA/SCL pins on your Feather and can share those pins with other I2C devices and sensors.

Related Guides in the Adafruit Learn System


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NeoPixel FeatherWing – 4×8 RGB LED Add-on: This is the NeoPixel FeatherWing, a 4×8 RGB LED Add-on For All Feather Boards! Using our Feather Stacking Headers or Feather Female Headers you can connect a FeatherWing on top or bottom of your Feather board and make your Feather board strut like a peacock at a rave.

Put on your sunglasses before staring into these 32 configurable eye-blistering RGB LEDs. Arranged in a 4×8 matrix, each pixel is individually addressable. Only one pin is required to control all the LEDs. On the bottom we have jumpers for the DIN line to any of the I/O pins on a Feather. Works with any/all of our Feathers! You can cut the default jumper trace and use any pin you like. (In particular, the default pin for Feather Huzzah ESP8266 must be moved, try pin #15!)

To make it easy to start, the LEDs are by default powered from either the USB power line or Battery power line, whichever is higher. Two Schottky diodes are used to switch between the two. This power arrangement is able to handle 1 Amp of constant current draw and maybe 2A peak, so not a good way to make a flashlight. It’s better for colorful effects.

Related Guides in the Adafruit Learn System


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TFT FeatherWing – 2.4” 320×240 Touchscreen:Spice up your Feather project with a beautiful 2.4″ touchscreen display shield with built in microSD card socket. This TFT display is 2.4″ diagonal with a bright 4 white-LED backlight. You get 240×320 pixels with individual 16-bit color pixel control. It has way more resolution than a black and white 128×64 display. As a bonus, this display comes with a resistive touchscreen attached to it already, so you can detect finger presses anywhere on the screen.

This FeatherWing uses a SPI display so it works fast on each and every one of our Feathers. We also include an SPI resistive touchscreen controller so you only need one additional pin to add a high quality touchscreen controller. One more pin is used for an optional SD card that can be used for storing images for display.

This Wing comes fully assembled with dual sockets for your Feather to plug into. You get two sockets per pin so you can plug in wires if you want to connect to Feather pins. Alternatively, each pin has a large square pad on the PCB for direct soldering.

Four mounting holes make it easy to attach this Wing anywhere. We also include a big reset button and an on/off switch connected to the Feather Enable pin (note that the Teensy 3.x Feather does not use the Enable pin so the switch will not do anything with that type).

Related Guides in the Adafruit Learn System


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Adafruit DotStar FeatherWing – 6 x 12 RGB LEDs: This is the DotStar FeatherWing, a 6×12 RGB LED Add-on For All Feather Boards! Using our Feather Stacking Headers or Feather Female Headers you can connect a FeatherWing on top or bottom of your Feather board and make your Feather board strut like a peacock at a rave.

Put on your sunglasses before staring into these 72 configurable RGB LEDs, they are super bright! Arranged in a 6×12 matrix, each 2mm by 2mm sized RGB pixel is individually addressable. Only two pins are required to control all the LEDs. On the bottom we have jumpers for the Data and Clock lines so you can change them from the defaults. Works with any/all of our Feathers! You can cut the default jumper traces and use any pins you like

To make it easy to start, the LEDs are by default powered from either the USB power line or Battery power line, whichever is higher. Two Schottky diodes are used to switch between the two. This power arrangement is able to handle 1 Amp of constant current draw and maybe 2A peak, so not a good way to make a flashlight. It’s better for colorful effects. A power MOSFET is set up and connected to the ENABLE pin on the Feather so that when the Feather is disabled, the wing will also cut power.

Related Guides in the Adafruit Learn System


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Adafruit Joy FeatherWing:Make a game or robotic controller with this Joy-ful FeatherWing.This FeatherWing has a 2-axis joystick and 5 momentary buttons (4 large and 1 small) so you can turn your feather board into a tiny game controller. This wing communicates with your host microcontroller over I2C so it’s easy to use and doesn’t take up any of your precious analog or digital pins. There is also an optional interrupt pin that can alert your feather when a button has been pressed or released to free up processor time for other tasks.

This FeatherWing features Adafruit Seesaw technology – a custom programmed little helper microcontroller that takes the two analog inputs from the joystick, and 5 button inputs, and converts it into a pretty I2C interface. This I2C interface means you don’t ‘lose’ any GPIO or analog inputs when using this ‘Wing, and it works with any and all Feathers! You can easily stack this with any other FeatherWing because I2C is a shared bus. If you have an I2C address conflict, or you want to connect more than one of these to a Feather, there are two address-select jumpers so you have 4 options of I2C addresses

There’s an optional IRQ (interrupt) line that you can use if you’d like the Wing to let you know when a button has been pressed. Since its optional (and most Feathers are perfectly happy polling the Wing for data) we left a bunch of solder jumpers so you can select what pin has the IRQ on it. Or just leave it disconnected!

We have an Adafruit Seesaw library for Arduino, Python and CircuitPython so you can get started with the Joy FeatherWing in a jiffy.

Related Guides in the Adafruit Learn System


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We’re excited for the Holiday Season here at Adafruit and we can’t wait to share that excitement with you! Tune into the Adafruit Blog for six weeks of hand picked Adafruit Holiday Gift Guides featuring Adafruit products, projects and more starting Monday November 13.

Still not sure if you’re on the right gift giving track? Gift Certificates are the perfect cyber-present for the electronics geek in your life and are available at any time. When in doubt contact us!


Free Deals

Adafruit offers exciting deals and free items when you shop with us.

As of October 9th, 2017 12:00 PM ET we are offering a number of free products!

For orders of $149 or more – a free Adafruit Trinket M0

For orders of $200 or more – free UPS ground shipping (*Continental USA only)

For orders of $249 or more – a free Adafruit Gemma M0

For orders of $299 or more – a free Adafruit Circuit Playground Express

If you love CircuitPython, then you’ll love this promotion! The Trinket M0, GEMMA M0, and Circuit Playground Express are all great boards for getting going with CircuitPython.

Some restrictions apply


Adafruit Holiday Shipping Deadlines 2017

Here are your 2017 shipping deadlines for ordering from Adafruit. Please review our shipping section if you have specific questions on how and where we ship worldwide for this holiday season.

The Adafruit Shipping Department works hard to get your orders out as quickly as we can, but once they’re in the hands of our carriers they’re out of our control. Carriers have been struggling to keep up with the sharp rise in online orders. UPS, FedEX, and USPS all experienced delivery delays over the last few years.

So all the Adafruit Shippers say: Please be sure you get your gifts early! Order as soon as you can! Once you place your order we’ll ship like the wind!

Please note: We do not offer Saturday or Sunday service for DHL, UPS or USPS.

Monday, Dec. 25, 2017, Christmas, no DHL, UPS or USPS pickup or delivery service.

Monday, Jan. 1, 2018, no DHL, UPS or USPS pickup or delivery service.

Domestic Orders

UPS Ground: Place orders by Friday 11 am ET – December 8, 2017 – There is no guarantee that UPS Ground packages will arrive by December 22, 2017.

UPS 3 Day: Place orders by Thursday 11 am ET – December 14, 2017 – Arrive by 12/22/2017.

UPS 2 Day: Place orders by Friday 11 am ET – December 15, 2017 – Arrive by 12/22/2017

UPS Next Day: Place orders by Monday 11 am ET – December 18, 2017 – Arrive by 12/22/2017.

USPS First Class and USPS Priority: Place orders by Friday– December 8, 2017 – Arrive by 12/22/2017 or sooner.

International Orders

USPS First Class Mail International: Place orders by Friday – November 18, 2017. Can take up to 30 days or more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/22/2017 or sooner, but not a trackable service and cannot be guaranteed to arrive by 12/22/2017.

USPS Express Mail International: Place orders by Friday – December 1, 2017. Can take up to 15 days or more with worldwide delays and customs. Should arrive by 12/22/2017 or sooner.

UPS WORLDWIDE EXPRESS, UPS WORLDWIDE EXPEDITED and UPS EXPRESS SAVER (UPS International orders): Place orders by Friday 11 am ET – December 8, 2017 – There is no guarantee that international packages will arrive by December 22, 2017.

DHL EXPRESS WORLDWIDE: Place orders by Friday 11 am ET – December 8, 2017 – There is no guarantee that international packages will arrive by December 22, 2017.


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