Make: Boards Guide reviews the Adafruit Neo Trinkey #Adafruit #NeoTrinkey
Make: Boards Guide reviews the Adafruit Neo Trinkey in an article today.
Sometimes you have a small job that just needs to be done well. It’s those moments where you see a board and say to yourself — this is it! “This is it” sums up a lot of aspects of the Neo Trinkey. This tiny little board is part USB key, part microcontroller, emphasis on the micro. Coming in just slightly longer than a quarter, but even thinner this board is perfect for simple tasks such as notifications or hot keys.
It sports a capable ATSAMD21 microcontroller with minimal circuitry. Don’t worry about its sparse part count and small size, the M0 processor can more than handle the four built-in RGB NeoPixel LEDs and two capacitive touch pads. Upon seeing this I instantly thought of dozens of uses that this board was the perfect answer for, from building machine monitors to Discord and email alarms. With a handy reset switch also onboard to help switch between modes easily, it’s got everything you need for those specific uses, but nothing you don’t. (Those whose needs may be greater should look elsewhere as you won’t find any place for pin-headers here.) What you see is what you get, a colorful board entry with a keychain hole built in!
Neo Trinkey can be programmed in either Arduino or Circuit Python and has a variety of modes. Serial? Yup. HID? Absolutely. MIDI? Amen! It even works as a fittingly tiny USB drive for some diminutive missives. A tiny board, with some tiny lights and buttons, at a tiny price. The Neo Trinkey is a bright project waiting for your bright idea.
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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.
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Python for Microcontrollers — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: MicroPython Pico W Bluetooth, CircuitPython 8.0.4 and much more! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
