Adafruit Feather 32u4 Bluefruit LE with
Stacking Headers - Assembled
PRODUCT ID: 3242
Description
This is the Adafruit Feather 32u4 Bluefruit ‐ our take on an 'all‐in‐one' Arduino‐compatible + Bluetooth
Low Energy with built in USB and battery charging. It's an Adafruit Feather 32u4 with a BTLE module,
ready to rock!
Feather is the new development board from Adafruit, and like its namesake it is thin, light, and lets you
fly! We designed Feather to be a new standard for portable microcontroller cores. We have other
boards in the Feather family, check'em out here.
Bluetooth Low Energy is the hottest new low‐power, 2.4GHz spectrum wireless protocol. In particular,
it's the only wireless protocol that you can use with iOS without needing special certification, and it's
supported by all modern smart phones. This makes it excellent for use in portable projects that will
make use of an iOS or Android phone or tablet. It also is supported in Mac OS X and Windows 8+.
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.
To make it easy to use for portable projects, we added a connector for any of our 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 it's available. We also tied the
battery through a divider to an analog pin, so you can measure and monitor the battery voltage to
detect when you need a recharge.
This Adafruit Feather 32u4 Bluefruit comes assembled with Feather Stacking Headers.
Here are some handy specs! Like all Feather 32u4's you get:
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Measures 2.0" x 0.9" x 0.28" (51mm x 23mm x 8mm) without headers soldered in
Light as a (large?) feather ‐ 5.7 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
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 Bluefruit LE uses the extra space left over to add our excellent Bluefruit BTLE module
+ two status indicator LEDs.
The Power of Bluefruit LE
The Bluefruit LE module is an nRF51822 chipset from Nordic, programmed with multi‐function code
that can do quite a lot! For most people, they'll be very happy to use the standard Nordic UART RX/TX
connection profile. In this profile, the Bluefruit acts as a data pipe, that can 'transparently' transmit
back and forth from your iOS or Android device. You can use our iOS App or Android App, or write your
own to communicate with the UART service.
The board is capable of much more than just sending strings over the air! Thanks to an easy to learn AT
command set, you have full control over how the device behaves, including the ability to define and
manipulate your own GATT Services and Characteristics, or change the way that the device advertises
itself for other Bluetooth Low Energy devices to see. You can also use the AT commands to query the
die temperature, check the battery voltage, and more, check the connection RSSI or MAC address, and
tons more. Really, way too long to list here!
Use the Bluefruit App to get your project started
With our Bluefruit iOS App or Android App, you can quickly get your project prototyped by using your
iOS or Android phone/tablet as a controller. We have a color picker,
quaternion/accelerometer/gyro/magnetometer or location (GPS), and an 8‐button control game pad.
This data can be read over BLE and piped into the ATmega32u4 chip for processing & control
You can do a lot more too!
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The Bluefruit can also act like an HID Keyboard (for devices that support BLE HID)
Can become a BLE Heart Rate Monitor (a standard profile for BLE) ‐ you just need to
add the pulse‐detection circuitry
Turn it into a UriBeacon, the Google standard for Bluetooth LE beacons. Just power it
and the 'Friend will bleep out a URL to any nearby devices with the UriBeacon app
installed.
Built in over‐the‐air bootloading capability so we can keep you updated with the
hottest new firmware. Use any Android or iOS device to get updates and install them.
This will update the native code on the BLE module, to add new wireless capabilities,
not program the ATmega chip.
Comes fully assembled and tested, with a USB bootloader that lets you quickly use it with the Arduino
IDE. Also comes with stacking headers pre‐soldered, so you can plug right into a solderless breadboard
and stack a FeatherWing. See here for the unsoldered version. Lipoly battery and MicroUSB cable not
included (but we do have lots of options in the shop if you'd like!)
Technical Details
Pinout Datasheet, MDBT Datasheet, schematic, EagleCAD PCB files, and Fritzing available in the product
tutorial https://cdn‐learn.adafruit.com/downloads/pdf/adafruit‐feather‐32u4‐bluefruit‐le.pdf
Product Dimensions: 51.2mm x 22.8mm x 19.2mm / 2.0" x 0.9" x 0.8"
Product Weight: 8.5g / 0.3oz
https://www.adafruit.com/product/3242 10‐30‐17