Circuit Playground Bluefruit is our third board in the Circuit Playground series, another step towards a perfect introduction to electronics and programming. We've taken the popular Circuit Playground Express and made it even better! Now the main chip is an nRF52840 microcontroller which is not only more powerful, but also comes with Bluetooth Low Energy support for wireless connectivity.
The board is round and has alligator-clip pads around it so you don't have to solder or sew to make it work. You can power it from USB, a AAA battery pack, or with a Lipoly battery (for advanced users). Circuit Playground Bluefruit has built-in USB support. Built in USB means you plug it in to program it and it just shows up, no special cable or adapter required. Just program your code into the board then take it on the go!
You can use this board with Arduino or CircuitPython - It does not support MakeCode at this time (there is no ETA when it might be added)
Here's some of the great goodies baked in to each Circuit Playground Bluefruit:
- 1 x nRF52840 Cortex M4 processor with Bluetooth Low Energy support
- 10 x mini NeoPixels, each one can display any color
- 1 x Motion sensor (LIS3DH triple-axis accelerometer with tap detection, free-fall detection)
- 1 x Temperature sensor (thermistor)
- 1 x Light sensor (phototransistor). Can also act as a color sensor and pulse sensor.
- 1 x Sound sensor (MEMS microphone)
- 1 x Mini speaker with class D amplifier (7.5mm magnetic speaker/buzzer)
- 2 x Push buttons, labeled A and B
- 1 x Slide switch
- 8 x alligator-clip friendly input/output pins
- Includes I2C, UART, 6 pins that can do analog inputs, multiple PWM outputs
- Green "ON" LED so you know its powered
- Red "#13" LED for basic blinking
- Reset button
- 2 MB of SPI Flash storage, used primarily with CircuitPython to store code and libraries.
- MicroUSB port for programming and debugging
- USB port can act like serial port, keyboard, mouse, joystick or MIDI!
Technical Details
- Outer Diameter: ~50.6mm / ~2.0"
- Weight: 8.9g
Revision History:
- As of Nov 22, 2019 we updated this design from Alpha to release. The antenna design changed slightly, and we added a pin that allows the user to turn off power to the NeoPixels, microphone, and temperature/light sensor so only the accelerometer is active, for low power usage!
Learn
Wearable, eTextile and Adafruit Circuit Playground starter kits
- Circuit Playground Express - Base Kit
- Class set of Circuit Playground Express starter kit (12 Pcs)
- Circuit Playground Express
Bundle and Save
- Code.org Circuit Playground Express Educators' Pack
- Circuit Playground Express Advanced Pack
- Code.org Circuit Playground Individual Kit Pack
Accessories
- Circuit Playground Classic
- Polymer Lithium Ion Rechargeable Battery (LiPo) with Short Cable - 3.7V 300mAh (Pygamer, Pybadge LC compatible )
- Polymer Lithium Ion Battery (LiPo) 7.4V 3.34Ah & Compatible charger
- Polymer Lithium Ion rechargeable Battery with Short Cable - 3.7V 350mAh,
- Polymer Lithium Ion Battery (LiPo) 3.7V 3000mA
- Reviews
- Questions
AustraliaGood, fast shipping
Fast shipping, everything good with Pakronics. The board is fun to tinker with but note it's not full Python (can't use standard packages such as datetime), is troublesome to use with a common modern IDEs, and requires you to load various files on it prior to use. It's fun but it's not quite the full Python experience I was looking for.
AustraliaUnusable
It doesn’t work with makecode at all. I couldn’t get it to work with circuit python. Previous version of hardware was great, this, not so much. The support people were great, but there is only so much you can do.
Pakronics®
This version yet not supporting Makecode as mentioned in the description of the product.
AustraliaThe new playground
This is a much more powerful version of the playground circuit. Be aware that some Arduino libraries don't yet support the CPU architecture used, though most work fine.
AustraliaGreat update to the previous circuit express boards.
The bluefruit is a great update to the Circuit express series of Adafruit boards, I have bought two of these along with the CRICKIT robot board to create an onlne beginners robot training series. These boards have a lot packed into them include light and temp sensors as well as an accelerometer and an IR transmitter / receiver. The really nice things about this board is the different programming options you have from visual drag and drop code to python, or if you have experience in using Arduino's then you can even use the Arduino IDE. This plus bluetooth really allows this to be an easy to use yet powerful microcontroller.
New ZealandCPB
The Circuit Playground Bluefruit is a great product from Adafruit. It is really great for beginners
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