Adafruit Feather 32u4 Bluefruit LE

Rating:

100% of 100

SKU: ADA2829 Brand: Adafruit

Feather is the new development board from Adafruit, and like its namesake it is thin, light, and lets you fly! Adafruit designed Feather to be a new standard for portable...

$58.75 AUD, inc GST

$53.41 AUD, exc GST

Available with a lead time
Expect dispatch between Dec 30 and Jan 03

Quantity Discounts:

6-12 $51.27 (exc GST)
12+ $49.67 (exc GST)

Feather is the new development board from Adafruit, and like its namesake it is thin, light, and lets you fly! Adafruit designed Feather to be a new standard for portable microcontroller cores.

This is the Adafruit Feather 32u4 Bluefruit - Adafruit's take on an 'all-in-one' Arduino-compatible + Bluetooth Low Energy with built in USB and battery charging. Its an Adafruit Feather 32u4 with a BTLE module, ready to rock! Adafruit have other boards in the Feather family, check'em out here.

Bluetooth Low Energy is the hottest new low-power, 2.4GHz spectrum wireless protocol. In particular, its the only wireless protocol that you can use with iOS without needing special certification and it's supported by all modern smart phones. This makes it excellent for use in portable projects that will make use of an iOS or Android phone or tablet. It also is supported in Mac OS X and Windows 8+.

At the Feather 32u4's heart is at ATmega32u4 clocked at 8 MHz and at 3.3V logic, a chip setup Adafruit have had tons of experience with as it's the same as the Flora. This chip has 32K of flash and 2K of RAM, with built in USB so not only does it have a USB-to-Serial program & debug capability built in with no need for an FTDI-like chip, it can also act like a mouse, keyboard, USB MIDI device, etc.

To make it easy to use for portable projects, Adafruit added a connector for any of Adafruit's 3.7V Lithium polymer batteries and built in battery charging. You don't need a battery, it will run just fine straight from the micro USB connector. But, if you do have a battery, you can take it on the go, then plug in the USB to recharge. The Feather will automatically switch over to USB power when its available. They also tied the battery thru a divider to an analog pin, so you can measure and monitor the battery voltage to detect when you need a recharge.

Here's some handy specs! Like all Feather 32u4's you get:

Measures 2.0" x 0.9" x 0.28" (51mm x 23mm x 8mm) without headers soldered in
Light as a (large?) feather - 5.7 grams
ATmega32u4 @ 8MHz with 3.3V logic/power
3.3V regulator with 500mA peak current output
USB native support, comes with USB bootloader and serial port debugging
You also get tons of pins - 20 GPIO pins
Hardware Serial, hardware I2C, hardware SPI support
8 x PWM pins
10 x analog inputs
Built in 100mA lipoly charger with charging status indicator LED
Pin #13 red LED for general purpose blinking
Power/enable pin
4 mounting holes
Reset button

The Feather 32u4 Bluefruit LE uses the extra space left over to add Adafruit's excellent Bluefruit BTLE module + two status indicator LEDs.

The Power of Bluefruit LE

The Bluefruit LE module is an nRF51822 chipset from Nordic, programmed with multi-function code that can do quite a lot! For most people, they'll be very happy to use the standard Nordic UART RX/TX connection profile. In this profile, the Bluefruit acts as a data pipe, that can 'transparently' transmit back and forth from your iOS or Android device. You can use our iOS App or Android App, or write your own to communicate with the UART service.

The board is capable of much more than just sending strings over the air! Thanks to an easy to learn AT command set, you have full control over how the device behaves, including the ability to define and manipulate your own GATT Services and Characteristics, or change the way that the device advertises itself for other Bluetooth Low Energy devices to see. You can also use the AT commands to query the die temperature, check the battery voltage, and more, check the connection RSSI or MAC address, and tons more. Really, way too long to list here!

Use the Bluefruit App to get your project started

Using Adafruit's Bluefruit iOS App or Android App, you can quickly get your project prototyped by using your iOS or Android phone/tablet as a controller. Adafruit have a color picker, quaternion/accelerometer/gyro/magnetometer or location (GPS), and an 8-button control game pad. This data can be read over BLE and piped into the ATmega32u4 chip for processing & control

You can do a lot more too!

The Bluefruit can also act like an HID Keyboard (for devices that support BLE HID)
Can become a BLE Heart Rate Monitor (a standard profile for BLE) - you just need to add the pulse-detection circuitry
Turn it into a UriBeacon, the Google standard for Bluetooth LE beacons. Just power it and the 'Friend will bleep out a URL to any nearby devices with the UriBeacon app installed.
Built in over-the-air bootloading capability so they can keep you updated with the hottest new firmware. Use any Android or iOS device to get updates and install them. This will update the native code on the BLE module, to add new wireless capabilities, not program the ATmega chip.

Comes fully assembled and tested, with a USB bootloader that lets you quickly use it with the Arduino IDE. They also toss in some header so you can solder it in and plug into a solderless breadboard. Lipoly battery and MicroUSB cable not included (but we do have lots of options in the shop if you'd like!)

Check out Adafruit's tutorial for all sorts of details, including schematics, files, IDE instructions, and more!

Technical Details

51.2mm x 22.8mm x 8mm / 2" x 0.9" x 0.28"
Weight: 5.7g
Pinout Datasheet, MDBT Datasheet, schematic, EagleCAD PCB files, and Fritzing available in the product tutorial

This product is listed in:

Other Favourites>Feather>Feather Boards

Product Comments

Start the conversation

Exact shipping can be calculated on the view cart page (no login required).

Products that weigh more than 0.5 KG may cost more than what's shown (for example, test equipment, machines, >500mL liquids, etc).

We deliver Australia-wide with these options (depends on the final destination - you can get a quote on the view cart page):

$3+ for Stamped Mail (typically 10+ business days, not tracked, only available on selected small items)
$7+ for Standard Post (typically 6+ business days, tracked)
$11+ for Express Post (typically 2+ business days, tracked)
Pickup - Free! Only available to customers who live in the Newcastle region (must order online and only pickup after we email to notify you the order is ready). Orders placed after 2PM may not be ready until the following business day.

Non-metro addresses in WA, NT, SA & TAS can take 2+ days in addition to the above information.

Some batteries (such as LiPo) can't be shipped by Air. During checkout, Express Post and International Methods will not be an option if you have that type of battery in your shopping cart.

International Orders - the following rates are for New Zealand and will vary for other countries:

$12+ for Pack and Track (3+ days, tracked)
$16+ for Express International (2-5 days, tracked)

If you order lots of gear, the postage amount will increase based on the weight of your order.

Our physical address (here's a PDF which includes other key business details):

Unit 18, 132 Garden Grove Parade
Adamstown
NSW, 2289
Australia

Take a look at our customer service page if you have other questions such as "do we do purchase orders" (yes!) or "are prices GST inclusive" (yes they are!). We're here to help - get in touch with us to talk shop.

Have a product question? We're here to help!