Feather 32u4 Bluefruit LE [PID:2829] - (AD13634)

Description:

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

This is the Adafruit Feather 32u4 Bluefruit: our all-in-one Arduino-compatible + Bluetooth Low Energy board with built-in USB and battery charging. It's an Adafruit Feather 32u4 with a BTLE module, ready to rock!

Bluetooth Low Energy is the hottest new low-power wireless protocol. In particular, it is the only wireless protocol that can be used with iOS without needing special certification and is supported by all modern smartphones. This makes it excellent for use in portable projects that will connect to an iOS or Android phone or tablet. It also supports Mac OS X and Windows 8+.

At the Feather 32u4's heart is an ATmega32u4 clocked at 8 MHz and at 3.3V logic, a chip configuration we have a lot of experience with as it's the same as the Flora. This chip has 32 KB of flash and 2 KB of RAM, and with built-in USB. That means it has 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, we added a connector for any of our 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. 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 it's available. We also tied the battery through a divider to an analog pin, so you can measure and monitor the voltage to detect when you need a recharge.

Here are some handy specs! Like all Feather 32u4s, it has:

• Measures 51 mm x 23 mm x 8 mm (2.0" x 0.9" x 0.28") without headers soldered in
• Light as a (large?) feather - 5.7 grams
• ATmega32u4 @ 8 MHz with 3.3V logic/power
• 500 mA peak current output 3.3V regulator
• Native USB support, comes with USB bootloader and serial port debugging
• Also has tons of pins - 20 GPIO pins
• Hardware Serial, hardware I2C, hardware SPI support
• 8 x PWM pins
• 10 x analog inputs
• Built-in 100 mA LiPo 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 takes advantage of the extra space by adding our excellent Bluefruit BTLE module and two status indicator LEDs.

The Power of Bluefruit LE

The Bluefruit LE module is an nRF51822 chipset from Nordic, programmed with a capable, multi-function code. Most people will be 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 data from your iOS or Android device. You can use our iOS App or Android App or create your own to communicate with the UART service.

The board can do way more than just send strings over the air! Thanks to an easy-to-learn AT command set, you have full control over the device's behavior, including the ability to define and manipulate your own GATT services and characteristics, or change the way the device advertises itself to other Bluetooth Low Energy devices. You can also use the AT commands to query the chip's temperature, check the battery voltage, check connected RSSI or MAC address, and much more. Way too much to list here!

Use the Bluefruit app to kickstart your project.

Using our Bluefruit iOS or Android App, you can quickly prototype your project by using your iOS or Android phone/tablet as a control. We 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 sent to the ATmega32u4 chip for processing and control.

And there's even more you can do!

The Bluefruit can also act as an HID keyboard (for devices that support BLE HID).
Can become a BLE Heart Rate Monitor (a standard profile for BLE); just add a pulse-sensing circuit.
Turn it into a UriBeacon, Google's standard for Bluetooth LE beacons. Just power it and the "Friend" will transmit a URL to any nearby device with the UriBeacon app installed.
Built-in over-the-air DFU programming so we can keep you updated. Use any Android or iOS device to get updates and install them. This will update the native code on the BLE module, for adding new wireless capabilities, not for programming the ATmega chip.
Comes fully assembled and tested, with a USB bootloader that lets you quickly use it with the Arduino IDE. We also include some header to solder in for breadboard use. LiPo battery and microUSB cable are not included (but we do have lots of options in the shop if you...)

Reference link