Feather M4 Express
by Adafruit
This feather is powered by the ATSAMD51J19 - with its 120 MHz Cortex M4 with floating point support and 512 KB Flash and 192 KB RAM. Your code will zig and zag and zoom, and with a bunch of extra peripherals for support, this will for sure be your favorite new chipset.
And best of all, it’s a Feather - so you know it will work with all our FeatherWings! What a great way to quickly get up and running.
The most exciting part of the Feather M4 is that while you can use it with the Arduino IDE - and it’s bonkers fast when you do, we are shipping it with CircuitPython on board. When you plug it in, it will show up as a very small disk drive with main.py on it. Edit main.py with your favorite text editor to build your project using Python, the most popular programming language. No installs, IDE or compiler needed, so you can use it on any computer, even ChromeBooks or computers you can’t install software on. When you’re done, unplug the Feather and your code will go with you.
The Feather M4 Express uses the extra space left over to add a Mini NeoPixel, 2 MB SPI Flash storage and a little prototyping space. You can use the SPI Flash storage like a very tiny hard drive. When used in CircuitPython, the 2 MB flash acts as storage for all your scripts, libraries and files. When used in Arduino, you can read/write files to it, like a little datalogger or SD card, and then with our helper program, access the files over USB.
Easy reprogramming: the Feather M4 comes pre-loaded with the UF2 bootloader, which looks like a USB storage key. Simply drag firmware on to program, no special tools or drivers needed! It can be used to load up CircuitPython or Arduino IDE (it is bossa-compatible).
Comes fully assembled and tested, with the UF2 USB bootloader. We also toss in some headers so you can solder it in and plug into a solderless breadboard.
Technical details
- Measures 2.0” x 0.9” x 0.28” (50.8 mm x 22.8 mm x 7 mm) without headers soldered in
- Light as a (large?) feather - 5 grams
- ATSAMD51 32-bit Cortex M4 core running at 120 MHz, 32-bit, 3.3 V logic and power
- Floating point support with Cortex M4 DSP instructions
- 512 KB flash, 192 KB RAM
- 2 MB SPI FLASH chip for storing files and CircuitPython code storage.
- No EEPROM
- 32.768 kHz crystal for clock generation & RTC
- 3.3 V regulator with 500 mA peak current output
- USB native support, comes with USB bootloader and serial port debugging
- Built in crypto engines with AES (256 bit), true RNG, Pubkey controller
- 21x GPIO pins with following capabilities:
- Dual 1 MSPS 12 bit true analog DAC (A0 and A1) - can be used to play 12-bit stereo audio clips
- Dual 1 MSPS 12 bit ADC (6 analog pins some on ADC1 and some on ADC2)
- 6x hardware SERCOM - Native hardware SPI, I2C and Serial all available
- 16x PWM outputs - for servos, LEDs, etc
- I2S input and output
- 8-bit Parallel capture controller (for camera/video in)
- Built in 100 mA lipoly charger with charging status indicator LED
- Pin #13 red LED for general purpose blinking
- Power/enable pin
- 4 mounting holes
- Reset button
Tutorials
Purchase
Contribute
Have some info to add for this board? Edit the source for this page here.
CircuitPython 9.2.1
This is the latest stable release of CircuitPython that will work with the Feather M4 Express.
Use this release if you are new to CircuitPython.
Built-in modules available: _asyncio, _bleio, _eve, _pixelmap, adafruit_bus_device, adafruit_pixelbuf, aesio, alarm, analogio, array, atexit, audiobusio, audiocore, audioio, audiomixer, audiomp3, binascii, bitbangio, bitmaptools, board, builtins, builtins.pow3, busdisplay, busio, busio.SPI, busio.UART, collections, countio, digitalio, displayio, epaperdisplay, errno, fontio, fourwire, framebufferio, frequencyio, getpass, gifio, i2cdisplaybus, i2ctarget, io, json, keypad, keypad.KeyMatrix, keypad.Keys, keypad.ShiftRegisterKeys, locale, math, microcontroller, msgpack, neopixel_write, nvm, onewireio, os, os.getenv, paralleldisplaybus, ps2io, pulseio, pwmio, rainbowio, random, re, rgbmatrix, rotaryio, rtc, samd, sdcardio, select, sharpdisplay, storage, struct, supervisor, sys, terminalio, time, touchio, traceback, ulab, usb_cdc, usb_hid, usb_midi, vectorio, warnings, watchdog, zlib
Features: Feather-Compatible, Battery Charging, Breadboard-Friendly
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. These releases are even newer than the development release listed above. Try them if you want the absolute latest and are feeling daring or want to see if a problem has been fixed.
Previous Versions of CircuitPython
All previous releases of CircuitPython are available for download from Amazon S3 through the button below. For very old releases, look in the OLD/ folder for each board. Release notes for each release are available at GitHub button below.
Older releases are useful for testing if you something appears to be broken in a newer release but used to work, or if you have older code that depends on features only available in an older release. Otherwise we recommend using the latest stable release.
Update UF2 Bootloader
Latest version: v3.15.0
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.).
It is not necessary to update your bootloader if it is working fine. Read the release notes on GitHub to see what has been changed. In general, we recommend you not update the bootloader unless you know there is a problem with it or a support person has asked you to try updating it.
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. After you update, check INFO_UF2.TXT to verify that the bootloader version has been updated. Then you will need to reload CircuitPython.