Circuit Playground Express

by Adafruit

Image of Board

The Circuit Playground Express is Adafruit’s flagship educational board designed for CircuitPython. It brings the “batteries included” approach of Python to hardware by including an assortment of functionality built-in. It is one of the best beginner boards available. If you are new to hardware, then this is a great board to start with.

Here’s some of the great goodies baked in to each Circuit Playground Express:

  • 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). Can also act as a color sensor and pulse sensor.
  • 1 x Sound sensor (MEMS microphone)
  • 1 x Mini speaker with class D amplifier (7.5mm magnetic speaker/buzzer)
  • 2 x Push buttons, labeled A and B
  • 1 x Slide switch
  • Infrared receiver and transmitter - can receive and transmit any remote control codes, as well as send messages between Circuit Playground Expresses. Can also act as a proximity sensor.
  • 8 x alligator-clip friendly input/output pins
  • Includes I2C, UART, 8 pins that can do analog inputs, multiple PWM output
  • 7 pads can act as capacitive touch inputs and the 1 remaining is a true analog output
  • Green “ON” LED so you know its powered
  • Red board.D13 LED for basic blinking
  • Reset button
  • ATSAMD21 ARM Cortex M0 Processor, running at 3.3V and 48MHz
  • 2 MB of SPI Flash storage, used to store code and libraries.
  • MicroUSB port for programming and debugging
  • USB port can act like serial port, keyboard, mouse, joystick or MIDI!

Tutorials

Purchase

CircuitPython 5.3.0

This is the latest stable release of CircuitPython that will work with the Circuit Playground Express.

Start here if you are new to CircuitPython.

Release Notes for 5.3.0

DOWNLOAD .UF2 NOW

Built-in modules available: _pixelbuf, analogio, audiobusio, audiocore, audioio, bitbangio, board, busio, countio, digitalio, gamepad, math, microcontroller, neopixel_write, nvm, os, pulseio, random, rotaryio, rtc, storage, struct, supervisor, time, touchio, usb_hid, usb_midi

CircuitPython 6.0.0-alpha.1

This is the latest unstable release of CircuitPython that will work with the Circuit Playground Express.

Unstable builds have the latest features but are more likely to have critical bugs.

Release Notes for 6.0.0-alpha.1

DOWNLOAD .UF2 NOW

Built-in modules available: _pixelbuf, analogio, audiobusio, audiocore, audioio, bitbangio, board, busio, countio, digitalio, gamepad, math, microcontroller, neopixel_write, nvm, os, pulseio, random, rotaryio, rtc, storage, struct, supervisor, time, touchio, usb_hid, usb_midi

Absolute Newest

Every time we commit new code to CircuitPython we automatically build binaries for each board and language. The binaries are stored on Amazon S3, organized by board, and then by language. Try them if you want the absolute latest and are feeling daring or want to see if a problem has been fixed.

Past Releases

All previous releases are listed on GitHub, with release notes, and are available for download from Amazon S3. They are handy for testing, but otherwise we recommend using the latest stable release. Some older GitHub release pages include the same binaries for downloading. But we have discontinued including binaries as assets on newer release pages because of the large number of files for each release.

BROWSE GITHUB

UF2 Bootloader

Latest version: v3.10.0

The bootloader allows you to load CircuitPython, Makecode, and Arduino programs. The bootloader is not CircuitPython. You can check the current version of your bootloader by looking in the INFO_UF2.TXT file when the BOOT drive is visible (FEATHERBOOT, CPLAYBOOT, etc.).

To update, first save the contents of CIRCUITPY, just in case. Then double-click the reset button to show the BOOT drive. Drag the update-bootloader .uf2 file to the BOOT drive. Wait a few tens of seconds for the bootloader to update; the BOOT drive will reappear. Check INFO_UF2.TXT to verify that the bootloader version has been updated. Then you will need to reload CircuitPython.

DOWNLOAD UPDATER UF2