Adafruit Circuit Playground Express
- Getting Started with Adafruit Circuit Playground Express - $13.49
- Elenco FM Radio Kit - $17.99
- GroveZero STEM Starter Kit - $99.00
- Grove Zero Bit Kit Micro: Car - $44.90
- ElecFreaks Micro:bit Starter Kit - $42.99
At about the size of my wife's birth control pack, Adafruit's Circuit Playground Express brings a motherlode of possibility to budding makers, designers, and STEM students interested in electronics and programming.
The Circuit Playground Express (CPX) is a development and experimenting board condensed into a 2" disc. In addition to the myriad coding options you'll have when connecting it to a PC / Mac / Chromebook / Linux device, the CPX earns its schoolyard name from its collection of built-in sensors and interactive lights. These include: motion, temperature, light, and sound sensors; 10 x min NeoPixels, each of which can display any color; and a mini speaker with class D amplifier.
Connect the Circuit Playground Express to your bigger tech for programming and debugging access via Python, the Microsoft MakeCode graphical building block environment, C/C++ via the Arduino development environment, or JavaScript. Its USB port can act like a serial port, keyboard, mouse, joystick, or MIDI.
The Circuit Playground Express isn't the only attaboy I've got for Adafruit. Some of you may also remember another one of their equally nifty, yet slightly more devious programmer's products: the TV-B-Gone kit.
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