Adafruit Feather 32u4 Basic Proto

by Adafruit

Feather is the new development board from Adafruit, and like it's namesake it is thin, light, and lets you fly!

This is the Feather 32u4 Basic Proto, it has a bunch of prototyping space built right in. We have other boards in the Feather family, check'em out here!

At the Feather 32u4's heart is at ATmega32u4 clocked at 8 MHz and at 3.3V logic, a chip setup we've had tons of experience with as it's the same as the Flora. This chip has 32K of flash and 2K of RAM, with built in USB so not only does it have a USB-to-Serial program & debug capability built in with no need for an FTDI-like chip, it can also act like a mouse, keyboard, USB MIDI device, etc. This chip is well supported in the Arduino IDE and can run just about every sensor/library out there.

To make it easy to use for portable projects, Adafruit added a connector for any of their 3.7V Lithium polymer batteries and built in battery charging. You don't need a battery, it will run just fine straight from the micro USB connector. But, if you do have a battery, you can take it on the go, then plug in the USB to recharge. The Feather will automatically switch over to USB power when its available. They also tied the battery thru a divider to an analog pin, so you can measure and monitor the battery voltage to detect when you need a recharge.

Here's some handy specs!

  • Measures 2.0" x 0.9" x 0.28" (51mm x 23mm x 8mm) without headers soldered in
  • Light as a (large?) feather - 4.8 grams
  • ATmega32u4 @ 8MHz with 3.3V logic/power
  • 3.3V regulator with 500mA peak current output
  • USB native support, comes with USB bootloader and serial port debugging
  • You also get tons of pins - 20 GPIO pins
  • Hardware Serial, hardware I2C, hardware SPI support
  • 8 x PWM pins
  • 10 x analog inputs (one is used to measure the battery voltage)
  • Built in 100mA lipoly charger with charging status indicator LED
  • Pin #13 red LED for general purpose blinking
  • Power/enable pin
  • 4 mounting holes
  • Reset button

The Feather 32u4 Basic Proto has some extra space left over, so you get a tiny little prototyping area. If you just need to attach a button or sensor, you may be able to skip out on a breadboard and wire it directly on there.

Comes fully assembled and tested, with a USB bootloader that lets you quickly use it with the Arduino IDE. We also toss in some header so you can solder it in and plug into a solderless breadboard. Lipoly battery and USB cable not included

Check out Adafruit's tutorial for all sorts of details, including schematics, files, IDE instructions, and more!