ItsyBitsy M0 Express
by Adafruit
What’s smaller than a Feather but larger than a Trinket? It’s an Adafruit ItsyBitsy M0 Express! Small, powerful, with a rockin’ ATSAMD21 Cortex M0 processor running at 48 MHz - this microcontroller board is perfect when you want something very compact, but still with a bunch of pins.
ItsyBitsy M0 Express is only 1.4” long by 0.7” wide, but has 6 power pins, 23 digital GPIO pins (12 of which can be analog in, 1x analog out, and 13x PWM out). It packs much of the same capability as an Adafruit Metro M0 Express or Feather M0 Express but really really small. So it’s great once you’ve finished up a prototype on a Metro M0 or Feather M0, and want to make the project much smaller. It even comes with 2MB of SPI Flash built in, for data logging, file storage, or CircuitPython code.
The most exciting part of the ItsyBitsy M0 is that it is shipping with CircuitPython on board. When you plug it in, it will show up as a very small disk drive with code.py on it. Edit code.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 Itsy’ and your code will go with you.
Here are some of the updates you can look forward to when using ItsyBitsy M0:
- Same size, form-factor as the ItsyBisty 32u4, and nearly-indentical pinout as ItsyBitsy 32u4 3.3V
- ATSAMD21G18 32-bit Cortex M0+ with 256KB Flash and 32 KB RAM
- 3.3V logic, 48 MHz, 32 bit processor
- 2 MB SPI FLASH chip for storing files and CircuitPython code storage.
- Native USB supported by every OS - can be used in CircuitPython as USB serial console, Keyboard/Mouse HID, even a little disk drive for storing Python scripts.
- Built in red pin #13 LED
- Built in RGB DotStar LED
- Tons of GPIO! 23 x GPIO pins with following capabilities:
- 1 x True analog output pin - can be used to play 10-bit quality audio clips
- 13 x PWM outputs - for servos, LEDs, etc
- 11 x 12-bit analog inputs
- 7 x Hardware capacitive touch sensors with no additional components required
- 1 x Special Vhigh output pin gives you the higher voltage from VBAT or VUSB, for driving NeoPixels, servos, and other high-current devices. Digital 5 level-shifted output for high-voltage logic level output.
- Can drive NeoPixels or DotStars on any pins, with enough memory to drive 8000+ pixels. DMA-NeoPixel support on the VHigh pin so you can drive pixels without having to spend any processor time on it.
- Native hardware SPI, I2C and Serial all available
- Reset button and pin
- Power with either USB or external output (such as a battery) - it’ll automatically switch over
Comes assembled and tested ItsyBitsy M0, with header that can be soldered in for use with a breadboard. ItsyBity M0 comes with CircuitPython & example code programmed in.
Tutorials
Contribute
Have some info to add for this board? Edit the source for this page here.
CircuitPython 9.2.0
This is the latest stable release of CircuitPython that will work with the ItsyBitsy M0 Express.
Use this release if you are new to CircuitPython.
Built-in modules available: adafruit_pixelbuf , analogio , array , audiobusio , audiocore , audioio , board , builtins , busdisplay , busio , busio.SPI , busio.UART , codeop , collections , digitalio , displayio , epaperdisplay , errno , fontio , fourwire , i2cdisplaybus , locale , math , microcontroller , neopixel_write , nvm , onewireio , os , paralleldisplaybus , pwmio , rainbowio , random , rotaryio , rtc , storage , struct , supervisor , sys , terminalio , time , touchio , usb_cdc , usb_hid , usb_midi , warnings ,
Features: 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.