You might look at the shape of the Circuit Playground Express and think that there’s no way you can get an add-on board on it, but you’d be wrong. Rather than pin headers that most boards use, Gizmos use bolts and standoffs to hold expansion boards firmly in place, and these same bolts also provide an electrical connection. At the moment, there are only two Gizmos available – a proto board add-on and a TFT add-on (which graces this issue’s cover). The circular shape of the Circuit Playground means that Adafruit have been able to fit a 1.54-inch (39 mm) 240×240 pixel display. This is plenty of space for a bit of graphical output, whether functional or purely aesthetic.
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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.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
