The hardware

The Adafruit Playground Express is a microcontroller with a number of peripherals. In this, it is very similar to the BBC micro:bit we discussed in class (see slides). The Adafruit Playground Express has the following peripherals:

• 10 x mini NeoPixels (LEDs that can show different colors)
• It has a number of sensors:
  • Motion sensor: can detect whether the device is being moved
  • Temperature sensor: senses temperature.
  • Light sensor: senses the brightness of the light falling on the sensor
  • Sound sensor: senses the loudness of ambient sound
• Buttons:
  • 2 x Push buttons, labeled A and B
  • Slide switch
• The board also features an Infrared receiver transmitter, a mini speaker, and 7 pads that can act as (capacitive touch) inputs.

More information about the board can be found here: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-circuit-playground-express. The board and its labeled components are shown below:

Programming the board

The board can be programmed using Python. This is very simple. When you connect the board to a computer using a USB cable, the board is recognized as a USB flash drive. If you inspect the files on the board, you will notice that it contains a file called code.py. This file contains the code that will run whenever the board is provided with power. Below, I show a screenshot of the files on the board, pointing out the code file.

To make the editing and running of the code easier, we will use the mu-edit editor. This editor is described in the next section of this tutorial.