For many years, instructors and teachers have asked us to come up with a better way to teach programming and electronics. We have worked on Circuit Playground for over a year to come up with a board that is powerful, beautiful, fun, and Arduino-compatible!
Circuit Playground is a perfect introduction to electronics and programming. It combines an ATmega32u4 microcontroller (just like our popular Flora) with full official Arduino support and a collection of useful sensors, inputs and outputs all built-in. 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 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!
This pack is for educators who wish to purchase Circuit Playground development boards in bulk along with accessories for getting started. You’ll get enough parts for 15 students working individually or 30 students working paired up. All at a price that makes it possible to give anyone a chance to explore, perfect for classrooms and workshops!
In particular, this pack is for instructors teaching the physical computing unit of the Code.org CS Discoveries curriculum, but it can also be used by any instructor who is teaching with Arduino.
- 15 x Circuit Playground — Programmed with Firmata so it can be used with code.org out of the box
- 15 x USB cable — A/MicroB — 3ft
- 10 x Small Alligator Clip Test Lead (set of 12)
- 12 x Adafruit LED Sequins — Multicolor Pack of 5
Here’s some of the great goodies baked in to each Circuit Playground:
- 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)
- 1 x Sound sensor (MEMS microphone)
- 1 x Mini speaker (magnetic buzzer)
- 2 x Push buttons, left and right
- 1 x Slide switch
- 8 x alligator-clip friendly input/output pins
- Includes I2C, UART, and 4 pins that can do analog inputs/PWM output
- All 8 pads can act as capacitive touch inputs
- Green «ON» LED so you know its powered
- Red «#13″ LED for basic blinking
- Reset button
- ATmega32u4 Processor, running at 3.3V and 8MHz
- MicroUSB port for programming and debugging with Arduino IDE
- USB port can act like serial port, keyboard, mouse, joystick or MIDI
- Check out our detailed tutorial for pinouts, driver installation, Arduino IDE usage, and more!
- Circuit Playground outer diameter: ~50.6mm / ~2.0″
- Circuit Playground weight: 8.5g
- Schematic, Datasheets, EagleCAD PCB files, and Fritzing available in the product tutorial