Circuit Playground Lesson #0

2016-10-05 | By Adafruit Industries

License: See Original Project

Courtesy of Adafruit

Guide by Lady Ada

Intro

Hi there!

If you're here, it's because you want to learn how to build and make stuff with electronics! (If, rather than learn electronics, you'd like to look at pictures of cats instead, please check https://www.adafruit.com/galleries/cats-of-engineering).

And, you're in luck: there's never been a better time.

Gone are the days where you need thousands of dollars of equipment and lots physics/math background. Nowadays, if you want to learn to work with electronics, you can jump right in for $20 or less, and any sort of computer. And we're talking about learning a lot of electronics - from the basics of analog to the complexities of firmware. With a good pack of parts, you can build a base of knowledge that will take you from your first blinking LED to someone who can start prototyping and inventing custom products.

Who is this for?

Anyone with a computer they can install software on, an Arduino or compatible and the ability to type and click a mouse. That's pretty much the minimum.

You don't need to know a lot of physics or math, and just like an Art Degree isn't required for making art and being creative, you don't need to have a computer science degree. It helps if you're comfortable using computers but that's a skill most people pick up through life.

If you know how to program already - great! If not, don't worry, we'll teach you enough to be dangerous.

What is a Circuit Playground?

Circuit Playground is the name of the little round electronic circuit board that you are going to use as a tool to investigate and explore programming & electronics. Think of it as like a Swiss Army Knife or multi-tool for learning electronics as an art form! It is an all-in-one board so you can jump in quickly and do a whole lotta projects (It can slice, it can dice, it has lots of blinky LEDs!)

Circuit Playground can light up multicolored LEDs (make beautiful lighting effects), make sounds (like a synthesizer!), detect touch or color, sense the environment like temperature, sound, and motion, and more!

By programming your Playground with software, you can combine all these abilities. For example, it can use the sound sensor to listen to music, and then pulse the LEDs to react to the melody and rhythm it hears. Or, you can use the motion sensor to detect when someone moves your purse and play a loud alarm to scare them off!

Circuit Playground works with the Arduino software. You can use the Arduino IDE software to program Circuit Playground. The main chip in Circuit Playground is natively supported, which means you can use the thousands of projects and tutorials seamlessly!

Best of all, no soldering required! You do not need anything to get started other than a Circuit Playground, a common USB cable and any computer (Windows/Mac/Linux/Chromebook)

Who are you?

So, are you ready?

Let's do this thing!

About This Lesson

This lesson won't teach any electronics, really. It’s more for making sure that everything is setup and ready for the future lessons. It will verify the Circuit Playground is working as intended and that the computer you are using is compatible.

Think of this tutorial as the 'home base' of your journey. If things ever get into a weird spot come back here and re-verify this lesson!

One of the most important skills you'll have to learn is that when things go wrong (and they will, tons) come back to the most basic assumptions. This is a little bit of the "are you sure it’s on" of electronics. It's surprising how many skilled engineers will spend hours debugging a circuit to realize that...it wasn't plugged in!

Lesson Parts

Required:

A Circuit Playground! Of course, this is essential, and is required for all lessons.

Micro USB Cable any length. You probably have one of these around; they're the most common USB cable.

Make sure it’s a data/sync cable!

Not Required but... Recommended!

If you'd like to power your Playground for portable use, you can use a 3 x AAA battery holder with a JST PH-2 connector on it. These holders even come with an on/off switch so you can save battery when not in use.

Of course, 3 AAA batteries are required as well. Circuit playground works best with Alkaline or rechargeable NiMH batteries.

You can also use other AAA batteries such as Zinc or Lithium. NiCad batteries are not recommended.

Please use rechargeable batteries if you can, to reduce waste!

Take a Tour!

Here we'll take a tour and point out the names of the Circuit Playground. You'll want to refer back to this page a ton, so keep it handy when we say something like "JST connector" or "Reset button".

The Parts of a Circuit Playground

Here's a rough version of the parts of a Circuit Playground we'll refer to. Each part is covered in more detail in the next sections.

Microcontroller

Main Chip / Microcontroller

This is the 'brains' of the Circuit Playground. The thing that you program when you program! It's what runs the code, the CPU (Central Processing Unit). Kinda like the processor that runs in your computer but much much much simpler and smaller.

The chip has very thin little legs that go around it; you can see the little silver dots that connect each leg of the microcontroller to the circuit board. Those dots both mechanically and electrically connect the CPU - so it can send data to and from your computer and those sensors and lights.

Each one of those mini legs are called pins because older microcontrollers used to look like this:

Where each of the legs really do look like sharp pins. Those older microcontrollers are really big, though. And so over time the 'controllers got hit with a shrink ray until they looked like this:

Yep that little square has all the circuitry of the bigger chip, but so small you have to use tweezers to pick it up!

Our Pal, the ATMEGA32u4

The Circuit Playground microcontroller is called the ATmega32u4 and it has:

• 44 Pins
• Powered by 3 Volts
• Requires about 0.1 Watts of power
• Runs at 8 MHz
• 32 KB of flash storage
• ~2 KB of RAM
• Costs about $5 per

Compare this to, at the time of writing, a common computer chip, the Intel i5-6400

• 1151 Pins
• Powered by 1.35 Volts
• Requires about 35 Watts of power
• Runs at 2800 MHz
• No internal Flash storage, but most computers have at least 250 GB = 250,000 MB = 250,000,000 KB* of storage
• No internal RAM but most computers have at least 4 GB = 4,000 MB = 4,000,000* KB of RAM
• Costs about $200

(* yes I know it’s not exactly 1000)

So, clearly if you want an ultra-powerful computer processor that can play the latest games, an i5 is the way to go. But it’s expensive, and requires a ton of power, and you need to have a full motherboard to run it so it's kinda big. If you just want to do some simple tasks, a microcontroller like the '32u4 is peachy. Also, it’s quite handy that it has the RAM and storage inside of it - it’s not a lot but that means you don't need to hook up a hard drive to this chip, it’s very compact and complete.

Simplicity & Sturdiness

What's cool about the microcontroller is that unlike your computer which requires an operating system (Mac OS X or Windows) and booting up, the microcontroller is 'barebones'. When you plug it in, it immediately runs whatever code you asked it to do.

And, you don't have to worry about a diskette or hard drive or CD-ROM getting scratched or damaged. The storage inside of the chip lasts for a really long time. You could program your Arduino, leave it alone for decades, even hundreds of years & come back and power it up with a post-apocalyptic-cyber-battery and it would work just as new.

Battery Jack & Supply

Battery Power Jack

There are two ways to power your Circuit Playground: you can use the USB connector to connect to a computer or portable USB power pack or you can plug in a battery pack. USB can be used to power and program. The battery connection can only be used for power - but it's great for when you want to take your Circuit Playground out into the world.

This is the Battery Power Jack:

The technical specification for the jack is:

JST PH type 2-pin connector Pin #1 Power and Pin #2 Ground

You can use this with any battery pack that can provide at least 3.5V DC and up to 6.5V DC. In particular it works really well with 3 x 1.5V batteries, like this 3 x AAA battery holder.

Advanced users can connect up a single-cell rechargeable lithium ion or lithium polymer battery.

Lithium Ion or Polymer batteries are more difficult to use and require much more care than rechargeable AAA's so we don't recommend them.

Circuit Playground does not have battery charging built in so no matter what rechargeable battery you have, you will need a separate charger as well.

Onboard Power Supply

Circuit Playground is designed for beginners so it has some protection and regulation circuitry so that it is flexible about how it is powered. In particular there is a polarity protection diode (to avoid destroying the board if you have a backwards-connected battery). It also has an onboard 3.3V Power Supply:

This means you can power it from anywhere between 3.5V up to 6.5V and it will automatically regulate it down to a clean 3.3V.

Think of it like a barber. When you go to the hair salon, you have long uneven hair (just like the large, uneven power that is fed into the Circuit Playground from a battery pack). The stylist takes out the scissors and says OK how long do you want your hair? and you reply 3.3 inches long!

>snip snip< and your hair is cut straight off, leaving a very clean line.

Just make sure all of your hair err... battery voltage is at least 3.5 Volts because the regulator needs some extra length to work with.

Output Current

When powering Circuit Playground, you can draw at most 500 milliAmps of current. This is not a guarantee because you also have to make sure that the regulator doesn't overheat. If you're using some other voltage input, the max current you can pull continuously is approximately.

250 milliWatt / (Input Voltage - 0.3 - 3.3 V) = in milliAmps

So for 5V USB in, the max for continuous current is 250/(5-0.3-3.3) = 178 milliAmps

This is just a rough estimate and depends on if the power usage is continuous or just once in a while.

USB Connection

The USB Jack is next up in our tour

USB Jack

As we talked about in the beginning, this is how you connect your Arduino to your computer. You can use any computer with a USB port. You will need a cable to connect! This cable is usually not included.

Make sure you have a Micro USB cable

I can't stress it enough. Make sure you have a good USB cable. Naughty USB cables will really ruin your day, like a stone in your shoe. Just throw out bad cables and replace with a good one - they are designed to be disposable!

USB Inteface Chip??

If you're coming from any background with an Arduino you're used to having a secondary chip on the circuit board that acts as the USB to Serial Interface Translator chip. Circuit Playground does not have one of these! That's because the ATmega32u4 processor does the USB for you natively without the need for a second chip. There are a few tradeoffs; in particular you may need to reset the chip if the USB crashes but you'll learn how to do that.

Powering over USB

For permanent installation, you can power your Circuit Playground using a USB wall adapter - these come with almost every phone and gadget these days. They have a nice clean 5V output. Some have an output up to 5.5V but that’s OK. Basically, if it has a USB connection it will power your 'play just fine!

You can sometimes power an Circuit Playground project off of a portable USB power pack but these packs are often designed to charge a phone and the 'Play uses so little power that it will cause the pack to think that it is "done charging" and auto-shutoff.

So, try it out but your mileage may vary.

Basic LEDs

Your Circuit Playground has some lights that it can use to give you an idea of what it is up to.

These lights, called LEDs (pronounced Ell Eee Dee), are on just about every electronic device you own. Often times they're used to let you know if something is on and if there's an error. For example, here's a cable modem with multiple LEDs.

Each LED indicates the status of the modem. For example, on this device the one to the right is the POWER LED, it’s lit if there's good power. In the middle is the ONLINE LED, which lets you know if the modem was able to connect to the Internet.

Circuit Playground Basic LEDs

Likewise, the Circuit Playground has two basic (single-color) LEDs: ON and #13.

They sit to the left and right of the Micro USB jack.

ON LED - this LED will shine green whenever the Circuit Playground is powered. Always check this LED if your board is not acting right, if it’s flickering or off then you should check your power supply.

#13 LED - this is the one LED that you can control. The ON lights up automatically no matter what. The #13 LED, however, is connected to one of the main microcontroller's pins and you can turn it on or off when you start writing code. This LED also pulses to let you know when the bootloader is active and ready to receive a program.

It's called lucky #13 because it is connected to pin number 13 on the microcontroller!

Library Reference

You can turn the #13 LED on by calling the procedure CircuitPlayground.redLED(true) and turn it off with CircuitPlayground.redLED(false).

Reset Button & Bootloader

There's a special mini button labeled RESET right below the microcontroller. This is the, well, reset button. It will perform a clean restart of the microcontroller or let you start the bootloader by hand.

Re-starting/Resetting

To re-start your Circuit Playground (basically, same as turning it off and back on again) - click the reset button once. The Circuit Playground will restart itself.

Bootloader Mode

To start the Circuit Playground bootloader - click the reset button twice. The bootloader will run for 10 seconds during which time you can upload new code. You shouldn't have to do this unless something got a little confused in the 'Play, but it’s an essential skill! During bootloader mode, the red #13 LED will breathe on and off once a second.

It's good to practice both resetting (single click) and bootloading (double click). Check the Power Up test page for more details.

Buttons & Slide Switch

Now we're starting to get to the sensors built into the Circuit Playground. These are parts that are normally not included on an Arduino-like board. They are yours to play with and use as you travel on the path of learning!

Two Pushbuttons

There are two momentary pushbuttons, you can use these in any of your projects to change modes, indicate when to start or stop a sketch, and modify behavior, really anything!

• The Left button is connected to digital pin #4 
• The Right button is connected to digital pin #19

Both have 10KΩ pull-down resistors. That means that when the button is pressed the value read off those pins will be 'high'. You'll learn more about that later, but it’s here for your reference.

Slide Switch

The slide switch is near the center, right above the JST Battery Jack. There's a little nub you can slide left or right. This switch is connected to digital pin #21. When switched to the left, the value reading is 'high' (thus the symbol) and when switched right, the value read is 'low' (- symbol).

Library Reference

slideSwitch

You can call CircuitPlayground.slideSwitch() to tell you which way the switch is flipped. It will return true if the switch is to the left ( side) and false if the switch is to the right (- side).

leftButton and rightButton

You can ask if the buttons are pressed by calling CircuitPlayground.leftButton() or CircuitPlayground.rightButton(). They will return true if and only if the button in question is being pressed right when the function is called.

NeoPixels

One of the fanciest accessories on Circuit Playground are ten (10!) full color LEDs called NeoPixels. Each of these ten Pixels contains bright red green blue sub-LEDs and can display any of 16,777,216 different colors!

These pixels are controlled by a single data pin, #17. Unlike non-smart RGB LEDs, you can set the color and a little chip inside the LED will handle the PWM for you.

Since they are controlled in a chain, you will need to tell the Circuit Playground's NeoPixel code which one you want to set the color for. Each NeoPixel is numbered, starting with #0 at the top left and going counter clockwise till you reach #9.

Library Reference

setPixelColor

You can set the color for each pixel with the built in NeoPixel library:

CircuitPlayground.setPixelColor(n, red, green, blue)

Where n is between 0 and 9 and indicates which LED you are setting. red/green/blue vary between 0 (off) and 255 (full on).

clearPixels

You can quickly turn all the LEDs off with CircuitPlayground.clearPixels()

setBrightness

By default the global brightness of the LEDs is set to 30 out of 255. This means that the LEDs won't be insanely bright when you first use them.

You can change the global brightness at the beginning of the sketch (in setup) by running CircuitPlayground.setBrightness(b) where b varies from 0 (no LEDs will ever light) to 255 (incredibly bright!)

setBrightness only affects pixel colors set after it is called. That is, if you set an LED color and then call setBrightness, it won’t affect that older LED color. Only going forward will the brightness change to be different.

Temperature Sensor

You can sense the temperature using the onboard thermistor. A thermistor is a resistor that changes its resistance based on the temperature. They are a little more complex to use than temperature sensors that spit out Celsius, but they're also much less expensive.

We use the NTC thermistor (Murata NCP15XH103F03RC) for temperature sensing. While it isn't an all-in-one temperature sensor, with linear output, it's easy to calculate the temperature based on the analog voltage on analog pin #A0. There's a 10K 1% resistor connected to it as a pull down. You can read the analog value and calculate the temperature with the beta-constant, or just use the Circuit Playground library.

Library Reference

You can retrieve the current calculated temperature with CircuitPlayground.temperature() which will return you a floating point number in Centigrade. If you need Fahrenheit use CircuitPlayground.temperatureF()

Light Sensor

There is an analog light sensor, part number ALS-PT19, in the top left part of the board. This can be used to detect ambient light, with similar spectral response to the human eye. There is a 10K balancing resistor to convert the current drive to voltage.

This sensor is connected to analog pin #A5; you can use analogRead or the library to read the analog value. It will read between 0 and 1023 with higher values corresponding to brighter light levels. The range is approximately 0 Lux to 1500 Lux maximum.

1000 Lux will roughly read as 2 Volts (or about 680 as a raw analog reading). A reading of about 300 is common for most indoor light levels. Note that outdoor daylight is 10,000 Lux or even higher, so this sensor is best suited for indoor light levels!

Library Reference

You can request the raw analog reading (0 = no light, up to 1023 = ~1500 Lux) with CircuitPlayground.lightSensor()

Sound Sensor

A thin MEMS microphone can be used to detect audio levels and even perform basic FFT functions. You can read the analog voltage corresponding to the audio on analog pin #A4. Note that this is the raw analog audio waveform! When it's silent there will be a reading of ~330 and when loud the audio will read between 0 and 800 or so. Averaging and smoothing must be done to convert this to sound-pressure-level.

The microphone is sensitive to 100 Hz - 10,000 Hz audio frequencies. See the datasheet for more details.

Library Reference

You can read the raw analog value from the amplified microphone with CircuitPlayground.soundSensor() this will give you just a value from between 0 and 1023 where the default 'quiet' voltage is ~330. At this time there is no function for automatic sound pressure level or frequency binning.

Mini Speaker

You can make your circuit playground sing with the built in buzzer. This is a miniature magnetic speaker connected to digital pin #5 with a transistor driver. It is quite small but can beep with conviction! It's not good for playing detailed audio, more for beeping and buzzing and simple bleepy tunes.

The driver circuitry is an on/off transistor driver, so you will only be able to play square waves. It is also not the same loudness over all frequencies but is designed to be the loudest at around 4 KHz. See the datasheet for some more details.

Library Reference

You can play basic square wave beeps/tones with CircuitPlayground.playTone(frequency, duration_ms). Where frequency is the frequency in Hertz and duration is the time to play the beep for, in milliseconds.

That means CircuitPlayground.playTone(440, 500) will play 440 Hz (middle A) for 500 milliseconds (half of a second). The call will take the amount of time that it takes to play the tone, so if you have a duration of, say, 5000 milliseconds your Circuit Playground will spend 5 seconds playing a tone and won't be doing anything else.

Accelerometer

There is a powerful MEMS accelerometer in the very center of your Circuit Playground. This part is the LIS3DH, a 3-axis (X, Y and Z) sensing accelerometer. Accelerometers are the sensors in your WiiMote, phone, and other electronic devices that can sense tilt, gravity, motion and 'tap' effects. These sensors used to cost $20 each but now are so common we can include them for beginners!

The sensor can sense ±2g, 4g, 8g (g = 9.8 meters/s2). Of course, at all times on earth you will sense 1 g of gravity!

The LIS3DH is connected to the hardware SPI pins (to leave the I2C pins free) and has the chip select (CS) pin on digital pin #8 and an optional interrupt output on digital pin #7 (also known as IRQ #4)

Library Reference

Motion in X Y and Z

You can ask the sensor for the amount of g detected in X, Y and Z directions. Positive values mean acceleration in the direction of the arrow on the silkscreen. For X that means towards the USB jack. For Y that is to the left. For Z that is straight up pointing towards you when looking at the circuit board.

CircuitPlayground.motionX(), CircuitPlayground.motionY(), CircuitPlayground.motionZ() will each return a floating point value.

Setting Accelerometer Range

You can change the range; a smaller range (±2g) will give more precision. Larger ranges (±8g) can sense greater forces. You can set it whenever you like using CircuitPlayground.setAccelRange(range) where range can be LIS3DH_RANGE_2_G, LIS3DH_RANGE_4_G or LIS3DH_RANGE_8_G

Tap Detection

You can turn on tap detection by calling CircuitPlayground.setAccelTap(taps, threshhold)

Tap detection can detect single taps or 'double taps' (like a double-click). If taps is 1 you will only detect single taps, one at a time. If taps is 2, you will be able to detect both single taps and double taps.

You can detect taps in real time by calling CircuitPlayground.getAccelTap(). It will return 0 if no tap is detected, 1 if a single tap is detected, and 2 or 3 if double tap is detected.

The problem with that is you need to query it within about 100 milliseconds of the tapping, which can be difficult to do. If you are comfortable with interrupts you can use the interrupt output to have a function called when a tap is detected: attachInterrupt(digitalPinToInterrupt(7), myfunction, RISING) will call myfunction whenever the tap or double tap occurs.

Alligator Pads & Pinout

There are 14 total Alligator Pads on the outside of the Circuit Playground. These are for you when you want to add more sensors or circuitry without the need for soldering. Use any kind of alligator clip (the small ones work best but any size should be able to grip onto the pads)

Capacitive Touch

All 8 non-power pads (e.g. not the GND/3.3V/VBATT) around the Circuit Playground have the ability to act as capacitive touch pads. Each pad has a 1 MΩ resistor between it and digital pin #30. You can toggle this pin in your sketch to control whether the resistor is a pullup or pulldown or floating. Note that this means that all the pads have a 2 MΩ resistance between them, not important for 99% of uses but may be confusing for some cases where you are trying to detect very high resistance values.

Library Reference

You can get the capacitance reading from a pin using CircuitPlayground.readCap(pin) and just set the pin to any of the pad #'s next to the pad (e.g. 0, 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 10 and 12) The number returned will vary from about 0 to about 1000. Any reading above approximately 50 will correspond to a touch, but it does depend a bit on what material and length is connected to the pin so you will need to adjust your code based on your setup.

Pad Usage (pinout)

We'll use terminology like analog inputs, PWM outputs, interrupts, I2C, UART etc. We'll cover all this later; just know you can use this list for reference!

Left Side

Starting from the Micro USB jack and going clockwise here are what the pins do.

• 3.3V - this is the output from the onboard 3.3V power supply. This is the main power voltage for the 'Play but can also be used to power sensors, GPS or Bluetooth modules, etc. You can draw a maximum of 500mA. See the Battery Jack & Supply page for more details.
• #10 - this is connected to the microcontroller's pin #10. This pin can also be used for analog inputs and is called A10. It can also act as a PWM output.
• #9 - this is connected to the microcontroller's pin #9. This pin can also be used for analog inputs and is called A9. It can also act as a PWM output.
• GND - shorthand for Ground you'll need to this when powering or connecting to external devices.
• #6 - this is connected to the microcontroller's pin #6. This pin can also be used for analog inputs and is called A7. It can also act as a PWM output.
• #12 - this is connected to the microcontroller's pin #12. This pin can also be used for analog inputs and is called A11. It can also act as a PWM output.
• VBATT - this is the battery voltage output from whichever is higher: the JST battery pack or USB. It cannot be used as a power input! It is designed to power high-current or high-voltage devices that need more like 5V than 3.3V. If connected to USB, this pin provides 5V. If powered from battery, the output voltage will vary depending on the battery pack.

Right Side

Starting from the Micro USB jack and going counter-clockwise here are what the pins do.

• GND - Same as the other Ground pins
• SCL #3 - This is a special-purpose pin. It is connected to the microcontroller's pin #3. This pin can also act as a PWM output and an interrupt input (INT0). The other special usage is connecting to I2C sensors and devices, as the I2C Clock pin
• SDA #2 - This is a special-purpose pin. It is connected to the microcontroller's pin #2. This pin can also act as a PWM output and an interrupt input (INT1). The other special usage is connecting to I2C sensors and devices, as the I2C Data pin
• 3.3V - Same as the other 3.3V power supply pins
• RX #0 - This is a special-purpose pin. It is connected to the microcontroller's pin #0. This pin can also act as an interrupt input (INT2). The other special usage is connecting to UART/Serial sensors and devices, as the Data Receive (RX) pin.
• TX #1 - This is a special-purpose pin. It is connected to the microcontroller's pin #1. This pin can also act as an interrupt input (INT3). The other special usage is connecting to UART/Serial sensors and devices, as the Data Transmit (TX) pin.
• GND - Same as the other Ground pins

Power Up Test

Now we are ready for the moment of truth, it's time to plug your Circuit Playground in and power it up. The easiest way to do this is to plug one end of the USB cable into the 'Play and the other end into a computer. The computer will then power the Circuit Playground.

You'll need a USB cable with a slim Micro B-type end:

Make sure that the USB cable is plugged in directly to a computer port. Sometimes monitors or keyboards have a USB port you can plug into. Most of the time this is fine, but I strongly suggest you plug it directly into the computer as that will eliminate any possible problems. Same goes for USB hubs - skip those for now and go direct

Later on, once you've verified you can power the Circuit Playground and upload sketches no problem, then you can try plugging it into other ports.

OK anyways, so plug in the USB cable and check that your board looks like this:

In particular, make sure the green ON LED is lit!

If this is the first time you're plugging in your Circuit Playground fresh from the factory, the red L LED and NeoPixels might also be lit or blinking - this is normal.

If no lights or blinking occurs, double check:

• Is the USB cable plugged into the computer and into the Circuit Playground?
• Try another USB cable
• Check there's nothing metallic touching the Circuit Playground that could be shorting out the device
• Is the computer on?
• Try another USB port, USB cable, and computer?

If you still can't get it working, your Circuit Playground may be faulty and need replacement!

Bootloader Reset Test

Next up, you can do a quick bootloader test - this will let you know that the Circuit Playground chip has been programmed with a bootloader which is required!

While powered, double click the Reset button - you will see the #13 red LED breathe/pulse on and off. It will pulse about 10 times, once per second.

If you get both the green ON LED lit and the red #13 LED to pulse you are well on your way and have passed the power up test!

Download Software

To get you all set up, start by installing the Arduino IDE Software

This is the free application you'll use to write programs and talk to your Arduino or compatible. Did we mention it is free? How awesome is that?

You can download Arduino from

https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Software

When you visit the Arduino site you'll see a section like this:

The Arduino software is under constant revision. As of this writing, the version available is 1.6.9 but you may have a more recent version. Just grab whatever is the most recent.

Windows

Download and install with the Installer. The Zip file (non-admin install) is not recommended unless you cannot run the installer.

Mac

Download and drag the Application out of the compressed folder.

Linux

Available for 32-bit or 64-bit Linux, once you download you will need to manually decompress and install.

Raspberry Pi and other ARM-based Linux

There's a new version you can use that is compiled for ARM processors! It works on the Raspberry Pi and will likely work on any other ARM core Linux.

Install Software (Windows)

Installing Arduino

Visit arduino.cc to download the latest version of Arduino

Click on the Windows Installer link to download the installer, and then double click to launch it.

You may get a warning asking if you're sure you want to run the installer. It's ok, click YES

There is an open source license to click through. Install in the default location.

You can use the default setup installation options.

Finally it will take a minute or two to install.

When done you'll have the software installed.

Circuit Playground Driver

You will need to install separate drivers for the Circuit Playground board.

For all Adafruit compatibles, we have an all in one installer that will install all of the Adafruit board drivers.

Click below to download our Driver Installer.

Download Adafruit Boards Windows Driver Installer

Download and run the installer.

Run the installer! Since we bundle the SiLabs and FTDI drivers as well, you'll need to click through the license.

Select which drivers you want to install (we suggest selecting all of them so you never have to worry about installing drivers when you start to explore other Arduino-compatibles).

Click Install to do the installin'

You should not need to restart your computer but it's not a bad idea!

Find your Serial (COM) Port

To verify your Arduino driver installed properly, plug it into USB and open up the Device Manager. You can find the Device Manager in the Control Panel (search for Device Manager).

When you open the Device Manager, find the section called Ports and expand it:

You'll see an icon next to some text that says Adafruit Circuit Playground (COMxx) where xx is a number.

The COM number may vary but it should be something like COM3 or COM4. The COM stands for "communication", and each one has a unique number, known as the COM Port number. In this case the COM Port number is COM18.

You can unplug your Play to see the COM port device disappear and re-appear when plugged in.

If you don't see the Circuit Playground show up, check:

• Is your cable a data cable or charge only? Try another USB cable.
• Try another USB port!
• Verify you installed the drivers, you can always try installing them again (never hurts) and rebooting.

Install Software (Mac OS X)

Installing Arduino

Visit arduino.cc to download the latest version of Arduino.

Click on the Mac OS X Installer link to download the installer.

Then double click to expand/launch it.

it will automatically give you the Arduino app the teal icon:

No Drivers to Install!

Thanks to Mac OS X having the drivers built in, you won't need to install any other software!

Find your Serial Port Device

You can use Terminal to help find and verify your Arduino. First, launch the Terminal app - you can Command-F to Find the Terminal.app program:

Double click to launch it. At the text prompt, type in ls /dev/cu* (note the first letter is a lower-case L)

Make sure you see a line with the text /dev/cu.usbmodemxxxx or /dev/cu.usbserial-xxxxx where the xxx's can be anything. This indicates that the driver installed properly and that the Circuit Playground was found.

You can close the Terminal program now

Install Software (Linux)

Installing Arduino

Visit arduino.cc to download the latest version of Arduino

Click on the matching Linux Installer link (32 bit, 64 bit or ARM) to download the installer - save the file to your Downloads folder.

From within your Terminal program, cd to the Downloads directory, and untar the package with tar xf arduino*.xz then cd into the arduino-n.n.n folder created:

Run ./install.sh to install the software. I've got an old Ubuntu install so I got warnings, but it did create that desktop icon for me!

Driver Installation

Linux doesn't have any drivers to install, assuming you're running a v2.6 kernel or higher, which is almost certainly true. These instructions assume you're running Ubuntu. Each Linux distribution is different, but the instructions should be basic enough to follow for other distros.

You can verify your kernel version by running uname -a in a terminal window, note that this kernel is version 2.6.20

And this one is 3.2.0-23

Some older Linux distributions used to install brltty (braille device) which will conflict with the serial port. You must uninstall brltty if it is installed! Do so by running sudo apt-get remove brltty or equivalent in a terminal window. If it says it's not installed then that’s OK. If you're not running a Debian-derived installation use whatever tool is necessary to verify that you don't have brltty running.

Verify your Serial Port

Plug in the Circuit Playground, verify that the green LED is lit, and type ls /dev/ttyUSB* into a terminal window, you should see a device file called something like ttyUSB0

If you can't seem to find it, use dmesg | tail right after plugging in the Circuit Playground and look for hints on where it may put the device file. For example here is says Serial Device converter now attached to ttyUSB0.

If you see something like this

[ 1900.712000] ftdi_sio 2-10:1.0: FTDI USB Serial Device converter detected

[ 1900.712000] drivers/usb/serial/ftdi_sio.c: Detected FT232BM

[ 1900.712000] usb 2-10: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now attached to ttyUSB0

[ 1901.868000] usb 2-10: usbfs: interface 0 claimed by ftdi_sio while 'brltty' sets config #1

[ 1901.872000] ftdi_sio ttyUSB0: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now disconnected from ttyUSB0

[ 1901.872000] ftdi_sio 2-10:1.0: device disconnected

That means you have not uninstalled brltty and you should try again.

udev Rules

To use Adafruit's boards with most modern Linux distributions you'll want to ensure a few udev rules are applied.  These rules apply special configuration for USB devices like Adafruit's boards to work around or fix common issues.  Specifically these rules allow Trinket and other boards to be programmed by the Arduino IDE that's run as a normal non-root user.  The rules also fix an issue with ModemManager hanging on to /dev/ttyACM devices when using Circuit Playground, Flora or Bluefruit Micro boards.

To install the rules you'll want download them and copy to the location of udev rules on your system.  For most Linux systems like Ubuntu, etc. udev rules are stored in /etc/udev/rules.d/ (check your distribution's documentation / help forums if you don't see this folder exists).  Run the following commands:

wget https://github.com/adafruit/Trinket_Arduino_Linux/raw/master/99-adafruit-boards.rules
sudo cp 99-adafruit-boards.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/

Note that you might need to change the rule if you're using a distribution other than Ubuntu/Debian.  In particular the first rule in the file applies the 'dialout' group to Trinket, etc. boards so they can be programmed without running the Arduino IDE as root.  Some distributions use a different group for this instead of 'dialout'.  Check your distribution docs or help forums to see what group should apply to devices that can be accessed by non-root users.

Next you'll need to reload udev's rules so that they are properly applied.  You can restart your machine, or run a command like the following:

sudo reload udev

If the command above fails, try instead running:

sudo udevadm control --reload-rules
sudo udevadm trigger

And if that still fails reboot your system as it will ensure udev picks up the new configuration.

Add Circuit Playground to Arduino

Circuit Playground is not a default option available in Arduino; we need to add software support. This happens once, and will automatically update when we make improvements and upgrades.

Open up Preferences Menu

After you have downloaded and installed the latest version (remember it must be 1.6.4 or higher), you will need to start the IDE and navigate to the Preferences menu. You can access it from the File menu in Windows or Linux, or the Arduino menu on OS X.

A dialog will pop up just like the one shown below.

We will be adding a URL to the new Additional Boards Manager URLs option. New Adafruit boards and updates to existing boards will automatically be picked up by the Board Manager each time it is opened. The URL points to index files that the Board Manager uses to build the list of available & installed boards.

Add the Adafruit Board Support package!

paste

https://adafruit.github.io/arduino-board-index/package_adafruit_index.json

Into the "Additional Board Managers URLS" box

Click OK to save the new preference settings. Next we will look at installing boards with the Board Manager.

Manage Board Support

Adding the link to the Adafruit board support package does not actually install anything, it only tells the Arduino IDE where to find the software.

Now that you have added the appropriate URLs to the Arduino IDE preferences, you can open the Boards Manager by navigating to the Tools->Board menu.

Once the Board Manager opens, type Adafruit into the search box and locate the Adafruit AVR Boards item. Click on it and then click Install

Next, quit and reopen the Arduino IDE to ensure that all of the boards are properly installed.

You should now be able to see Circuit Playground listed in the Tools->Board menu in the Adafruit Boards section.

Add Circuit Playground Library

Lastly, we will add the library (collection of software) that gives you all the Circuit Playground goodies.

First, load up the Library Manager by going to the Sketch -> Include Library -> Manage Libraries menu.

Then in the Search box in the top right corner, start typing Circuit Playground and you'll pretty quickly end up with the Adafruit Circuit Playground Library showing up:

Click the Install button!

Library Reference

Thanks to caternuson for this reference while we work on this page

制造商零件编号 3000

CIRC PLAYGROUND CLASS ATMEGA32U4

Adafruit Industries LLC

¥162.39

Details

制造商零件编号 727

BATTERY HOLDER AAA 3 CELL LEADS

Adafruit Industries LLC

¥17.26

Details

制造商零件编号 1008

TEST LEAD GATOR TO GATOR 15"

Adafruit Industries LLC

¥32.15

Details

Add all DigiKey Parts to Cart

Have questions or comments? Continue the conversation on TechForum, DigiKey's online community and technical resource.

Visit TechForum

Arduino | 3D Printing | Raspberry Pi