ItsyBitsy NRF52840 Express
by Adafruit
What’s smaller than a Feather but larger than a Trinket? It’s an Adafruit ItsyBitsy nRF52840 Express featuring the Nordic nRF52840 Bluetooth LE processor! Teensy & powerful, with an fast nRF52840 Cortex M4 processor running at 64 MHz and 1 MB of FLASH - this microcontroller board is perfect when you want something very compact, with a heap-load of memory and Bluetooth LE support This Itsy is your best option for tiny wireless connectivity - it can act as both a BLE central and peripheral, with support in both Arduino and CircuitPython
ItsyBitsy nRF52840 Express is only 1.4” long by 0.7” wide, but has 6 power pins, 21 digital GPIO pins (6 of which can be analog in). It’s the same chip as the Feather nRF52840 but really really small. So it’s great for thse really compact builds. It even comes with 2MB of QSPI Flash built in, for data logging, file storage, or CircuitPython code.
The most exciting part of the ItsyBitsy is that while we ship it with an Arduino IDE compatible demo, you can also install CircuitPython on board with only a few clicks. 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 wireless-enabled 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.
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CircuitPython 9.0.4
This is the latest stable release of CircuitPython that will work with the ItsyBitsy NRF52840 Express.
Use this release if you are new to CircuitPython.
On nRF boards, CircuitPython 8.2.0 and later require UF2 bootloader version 0.6.1 or later. Older bootloaders cannot load the firmware. See Update UF2 Bootloader below.
Built-in modules available: _asyncio, _bleio, _pixelmap, adafruit_bus_device, adafruit_pixelbuf, aesio, alarm, analogio, array, atexit, audiobusio, audiocore, audiomixer, audiomp3, audiopwmio, binascii, bitbangio, bitmaptools, board, builtins, builtins.pow3, busdisplay, busio, busio.SPI, busio.UART, codeop, collections, countio, digitalio, displayio, epaperdisplay, errno, fontio, fourwire, framebufferio, getpass, gifio, i2cdisplaybus, io, jpegio, json, keypad, keypad.KeyMatrix, keypad.Keys, keypad.ShiftRegisterKeys, locale, math, memorymap, microcontroller, msgpack, neopixel_write, nvm, onewireio, os, os.getenv, paralleldisplaybus, pulseio, pwmio, rainbowio, random, re, rgbmatrix, rotaryio, rtc, sdcardio, select, sharpdisplay, storage, struct, supervisor, synthio, sys, terminalio, time, touchio, traceback, ulab, usb_cdc, usb_hid, usb_midi, vectorio, warnings, watchdog, zlib
CircuitPython 9.1.0-beta.1
This is the latest development release of CircuitPython that will work with the ItsyBitsy NRF52840 Express.
Alpha development releases are early releases. They are unfinished, are likely to have bugs, and the features they provide may change. Beta releases may have some bugs and unfinished features, but should be suitable for many uses. A Release Candidate (rc) release is considered done and will become the next stable release, assuming no further issues are found.
Please try alpha, beta, and rc releases if you are able. Your testing is invaluable: it helps us uncover and find issues quickly.
On nRF boards, CircuitPython 8.2.0 and later require UF2 bootloader version 0.6.1 or later. Older bootloaders cannot load the firmware. See Update UF2 Bootloader below.
Release Notes for 9.1.0-beta.1
Built-in modules available: _asyncio, _bleio, _pixelmap, adafruit_bus_device, adafruit_pixelbuf, aesio, alarm, analogio, array, atexit, audiobusio, audiocore, audiomixer, audiomp3, audiopwmio, binascii, bitbangio, bitmapfilter, bitmaptools, board, builtins, builtins.pow3, busdisplay, busio, busio.SPI, busio.UART, codeop, collections, countio, digitalio, displayio, epaperdisplay, errno, fontio, fourwire, framebufferio, getpass, gifio, i2cdisplaybus, io, jpegio, json, keypad, keypad.KeyMatrix, keypad.Keys, keypad.ShiftRegisterKeys, keypad_demux, keypad_demux.DemuxKeyMatrix, locale, math, memorymap, microcontroller, msgpack, neopixel_write, nvm, onewireio, os, os.getenv, paralleldisplaybus, pulseio, pwmio, rainbowio, random, re, rgbmatrix, rotaryio, rtc, sdcardio, select, sharpdisplay, storage, struct, supervisor, synthio, sys, terminalio, time, touchio, traceback, ulab, usb_cdc, usb_hid, usb_midi, vectorio, warnings, watchdog, zlib
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: 0.8.3
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.
On nRF boards, CircuitPython 8.2.0 and later require UF2 bootloader version 0.6.1 or later. Older bootloaders cannot load the firmware. To check the version of your board's bootloader, look at INFO_UF2.TXT when the BOOT drive is present. To update the bootloader, refer to the "Update Bootloader" page in the guide for your board, or start with this page.
After you update, check INFO_UF2.TXT to verify that the bootloader version has been updated. Then you will need to reload CircuitPython.