Adafruit has unveiled a new low cost alternative of
the company’s more fully featured Adafruit PyBadge, paring down the hardware to
make it even more affordable but still leaving support for MakeCode Arcade,
CircuitPython or Arduino. The badge will soon be available to purchase and
include the same processor chip, QSPI Flash, on/off switch, buttons, buzzer,
light sensor and battery circuit. Together with a 1.8″ 160×128 colour TFT
display with dimmable backlight.
“What’s the size of a credit card and can run
CircuitPython, MakeCode Arcade or Arduino even when you’re on a budget? That’s
right, it’s the Adafruit PyBadge LC! We wanted to see how much we could cram
into a 3 3⁄8 × 2 1⁄8 inch rounded rectangle, to make an all-in-one dev board
with a lot of possibilities, and this is what we came up with. The PyBadge is a
compact board, like we said, it’s credit card sized. It’s powered by our
favorite chip, the ATSAMD51, with 512KB of flash and 192KB of RAM. We add 2 MB
of QSPI flash for file storage, handy for images, fonts, sounds, or game
assets.”
Specifications of the Adafruit badge :
- ATSAMD51J19 @ 120MHz with 3.3V logic/power – 512KB of FLASH + 192KB of RAM
- 2 MB of SPI Flash for storing images, sounds, animations, whatever!
- 1.8″ 160×128 Color TFT Display connected to its own SPI port
- 8 x Game/Control Buttons with nice silicone button tops (these feel great)
- 1 x NeoPixel for badge dazzle
- Light sensor, reverse-mount so that it points out the front
- Built in buzzer mini-speaker
- LiPoly battery port with built in recharging capability
- USB port for battery charging, programming and debugging
- Reset button
- On-Off switch
