Adafruit NeoTrellis M4
By Sam Brown / May 2, 2019
Adafruit’s NeoTrellis has a nifty microcontroller at its heart, but you’re going to get one because of what it’s powering: A reprogrammable light-up keypad. Running through Adafruit’s always-excellent tutorials will get you to load up a drum machine, or put sound effects at your fingertips, one per button.
The NeoTrellis has a headset jack, microphone input included. Aside from that, connecting external devices isn’t really what this controller is about: There’s just a couple pins accessible to the outside world. If you want to attach a load of sensors and actuators, Adafruit has no shortage of other boards better suited to the task.
This one is a pre-built IO & Audio device that lets you use those microcontroller smarts to take over how it performs. You have a field of 24 glowing buttons to work with. Each button can change color as you see fit. Outputting sound in response to button presses is the obvious use.
I hope we’ll see more devices like the NeoTrellis kit: Ones that give the user a head start on the hardware side of their creation.
Specs | |
NeoTrellis M4 Kit | Adafruit |
---|---|
Type: | Microcontroller |
Price: | $60 (full kit) or $40 (board only) |
Dimensions: | 5.5"×3.15" |
Software: | CircuitPython or Arduino |
Clock Speed: | 120MHz |
Main Processor: | 32-bit ATSAMD51 Cortex M4 |
Memory: | 8MB flash, 192KB RAM |
I/O Pins (Digital): | 0 |
I/O Pins (Analog): | 2ADC (Alternately usable as UART or I2C) |
Wi-Fi: | No |
Bluetooth: | No |
Video: | No |
Ethernet: | No |
Input Voltage: | 5V |
Battery Charging: | No |
Operating Voltage: | 3.3V |