Adafruit Feather M0 Bluefruit LE

The Adafruit Feather is a sleek, lightweight development board designed to be a new standard for portable microcontroller cores. The Feather M0 Bluefruit LE combines an Arduino-compatible board with Bluetooth Low Energy (BTLE) capabilities, featuring built-in USB and battery charging functionality. This board includes the Feather M0 with a BTLE module, making it a versatile option for wireless projects.

Bluetooth Low Energy is a low-power, 2.4GHz wireless protocol supported by modern smartphones, iOS, Android, Mac OS X, and Windows 8+. It’s ideal for portable projects that interact with mobile devices.

At its core, the Feather M0 features the ATSAMD21G18 ARM Cortex M0 processor, running at 48 MHz with 256KB of flash memory and 32KB of RAM. The built-in USB functionality allows USB-to-serial programming and debugging, eliminating the need for an FTDI-like chip.

Designed for portability, the Feather M0 has a connector for a 3.7V Lithium Polymer (LiPo) battery and includes built-in battery charging. You can run the board directly from a micro USB connection or use the battery for on-the-go use, with the Feather automatically switching to USB power when available. It also includes an analog pin for monitoring the battery’s voltage.

Key features include:

• Size: 2.0" x 0.9" x 0.28" (51mm x 23mm x 8mm), weighing 5.7 grams
• Processor: ATSAMD21G18 @ 48 MHz with 3.3V logic/power
• Memory: 256K FLASH and 32K RAM
• Connectivity: USB native support, bootloader, and serial port debugging
• Pins: 20 GPIO, 8 PWM, 10 analog inputs, 1 analog output
• Power: 3.3V regulator with 500mA peak current, 100mA LiPo charger with status LED
• Extras: Pin #13 red LED, power/enable pin, reset button, and 4 mounting holes

The board also integrates the Bluefruit LE module (nRF51822 chipset) from Nordic, supporting a wide range of Bluetooth capabilities. By default, the module operates with a Nordic UART RX/TX connection profile, enabling transparent communication between the Feather M0 and iOS or Android devices. The Bluefruit module can be controlled via an easy-to-learn AT command set, allowing customization of the Bluetooth service and characteristics, battery monitoring, temperature querying, and more.

App Integration:

• Use the Bluefruit iOS or Android app to control the Feather M0 via BLE. Features include a color picker, accelerometer/gyroscope/magnetometer control, GPS, and an 8-button gamepad.
• It can also be turned into a HID keyboard, BLE heart rate monitor, or UriBeacon for Google’s BLE beacon standard.

Additionally, the Feather M0 supports over-the-air bootloading, allowing you to update the firmware via mobile devices, enhancing the board’s wireless capabilities.

Each order comes fully assembled and tested, with a USB bootloader for quick integration with the Arduino IDE. The board includes header pins for easy soldering into a breadboard. LiPo battery and micro USB cable are not included but are available in the shop.