Introducing Circuit Playground

Created by lady ada

Last updated on 2017-10-22 10:36:23 PM UTC

 Guide Contents

Guide Contents 2
Overview 4
Classic vs. Express 7
How to tell if you have a Classic 7
How to tell if you have an Express 7
Guided Tour 9
Power and Data 9
Micro B USB connector 9
JST Battery Input 10
Alligator/Croc Clip Pads 10
Microchip 10
LEDs 11
Green ON LED 11
Red #13 LED 11
10 x Color NeoPixel LED 11
Speaker 12
Sensors 12
Light Sensor 12
Temperature Sensor 13
Microphone Audio Sensor 13
Motion Sensor 14
Capacitive Touch 14
Switches & Buttons 14
Pinouts 17
Power Pads 17
Input/Output Pads 17
Common to all pads 18
Each Pin! 18
Internally Used Pins! 19
Windows Driver Installation 20
Manual Driver Installation 21
Arduino 23
Set Up & Test Arduino 24
Download Latest Arduino IDE 24
Install Drivers (Windows 7 Only) 24
Blink 24
Manually bootloading 25
Ubuntu & Linux Issue Fix 26
Circuit Playground Library 27
Installing Via Library Manager 27
Run the Demo 27
Select the Circuit Playground Board 28

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 2 of 36

 Select the matching Port 28
Load the Demo Program 28
Compile/Verify the Demo 29
Upload Demo 30
HELP! 33
I just plugged it in and I can't seem to connect to my Circuit Playground with Arduino! 33
Ack! I "did something" and now when I plug in the Circuit Playground it doesn't show up as a device anymore so
I cant upload to it or fix it... 33
I can't get the Circuit Playground USB device to show up - I get "USB Device Malfunctioning" errors! 34
Downloads 35
Windows Driver Software 35
Source 35
Datasheets 35
Schematic 35
Fabrication Print 35

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 3 of 36

Overview
Would you like to learn electronics, with an all-in-one board that has sensors and LEDs built in? Circuit Playground is
here, and it's the best way to practice programming on real hardware. No soldering or sewing required!

Circuit Playground features an ATmega32u4 micro-processor, just like our popular Flora. It also is round and has
alligator-clip pads around it. You can power it from USB, a AAA battery pack, or Lipoly (for advanced users). Program
your code into it, then take it on the go.

ATmega32u4 Processor, running at 3.3V and 8MHz

MicroUSB port for programming and debugging with Arduino IDE
USB port can act like serial port, keyboard, mouse, joystick or MIDI

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 4 of 36

Circuit Playground has built-in USB support. Built in USB means you plug it in to program it, it just shows up - all you
need is a Micro-B USB cable, no additional purchases are needed! With the new 1.6.4+ Arduino IDE, it takes only a few
seconds to add support. The Circuit Playground has USB HID support, so it can act like a mouse or keyboard to attach
directly to computers.

Here's some of the great goodies baked in:

10 x mini NeoPixels, each one can display any rainbow color

1 x Motion sensor (LIS3DH triple-axis accelerometer with tap detection, free-fall detection)
1 x Temperature sensor (thermistor)
1 x Light sensor (phototransistor)
1 x Sound sensor (MEMS microphone)
1 x Mini speaker (magnetic buzzer)
2 x Push buttons, left and right
1 x Slide switch
8 x alligator-clip friendly input/output pins
Includes I2C, UART, and 4 pins that can do analog inputs/PWM output
All 8 pads can act as capacitive touch inputs
Green "ON" LED so you know its powered
Red "#13" LED for basic blinking
Reset button

We've started out with a Developer Edition of Circuit Playground. This version is designed for people who have a little
experience with Arduino already, who want to help build & document projects. There might be minor hardware or
software bugs. Once we feel like the design is really solid we'll revise/re-release it into a universal edition for anyone to
use!

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 5 of 36

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 6 of 36
Classic vs. Express
Circuit Playground started its life as a board with simple requirements - just work with Arduino IDE and Code.org. But
since it's initial launch in 2015 we've learned a lot and improved the board greatly!

There are TWO Circuit Playgrounds - one Classic and one Express.

The Classic version can run Arduino and Code.org

The Express version can run MakeCode, CircuitPython and Arduino (Code.org support is not ready at this time)

How to tell if you have a Classic

Current Circuit Playground Classic boards have Classic

written on the back lower half

Older Circuit Playground Classics didn't have the word

Classic on the back, but they do have text that says the
chip type, ATmega32U4

How to tell if you have an Express

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 7 of 36

 Express boards have CIRCUIT PLAYGROUND EXPRESS
on the back lower half. They'll also note the chip is an
ATSAMD21

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 8 of 36

Guided Tour

Let me take you on a tour of your Circuit Playground Classic (we'll shorten that to CPC). Each CPC comes chock-full of
good design to make it a joy to use.

Power and Data

Micro B USB connector

This is at the top of the board. We went with the tried
and true micro-B USB connector for power and/or USB
communication (bootloader, serial, HID, etc). Use with
any computer with a standard data/sync cable.

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 9 of 36

 JST Battery Input
This is at the bottom of the board. You can take your
CPC anywhere and power it from an external battery.
This pin can take up 6V DC input, and has reverse-
polarity, over-current and thermal protections. The
circuitry inside will use either the battery input power or
USB power, safely switching from one to the other. If
both are connected, it will use whichever has the higher
voltage. Works great with a Lithium Polymer battery or
our 3xAAA battery packs with a JST connector on the
end. There is no built in battery charging (so that you
can use Alkaline or Lithium batteries safely)

Alligator/Croc Clip Pads

To make it super-easy to connect to the microcontroller, we have 14 connection pads. You can solder to them, use
alligator/croc clips, sew with conductive thread, even use small metal screws!

Of the 14 pads, you get a wide range of power pins, I2C,

UART, Analog In, Digital In/Out and PWMt.
Some of them can even sense the touch of your finger!
See the next pinouts page for more details!

All 8 non-power pads around the circuit playground have the ability to act as capacitive touch pads. Each pad has a
1Mohm resistor between it and digital pin #30. You can toggle this pin to control whether the resistor is a pullup or
pulldown or floating. Note that this means that all the pads have a 2Mohm resistance between them.

You can also of course just use those pads for GPIO, we expose the hardware Serial (TX + RX), hardware I2C (SDA +
SCL) and 4 gpio pins that can also do analog readings. They are the same exact pins as those on the Flora

Microchip
The brains of the operation here is the ATMEGA32u4 an 8-bit AVR microcontroller. It sits in the top center, and is what

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 10 of 36

you use to run Arduino!

LEDs

Green ON LED
To the left of the USB connector. This LED lets you
know that the CPC is powered on. If it's lit, power is
good! If it's dim, flickering or off, there's a power
problem and you will have problems. You can't disable
this light, but you can cover it with electrical tape if you
want to make it black.

Red #13 LED

To the right of the USB connector. This LED does
double duty. Its connected with a series resistor to the
digital #13 GPIO pin. It pulses nicely when the CPC is in
bootloader mode, and its also handy for when you want
an indicator LED. Many first projects blink this LED to
prove that programming worked.

10 x Color NeoPixel LED

The ten LEDs surrounding the outer edge of the boards
are all full color, RGB LEDs, each one can be set to any
color in the rainbow. Great for beautiful lighting effects!
The NeoPixels will also help you know when the
bootloader is running (they will turn green) or if it failed
to initialize USB when connected to a computer (they
will turn red).

Speaker
© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 11 of 36
 You can make your circuit playground sing with the built
in buzzer. This is a miniature magnetic speaker
connected to digital pin #5 with a transistor driver. You
can use PWM at varying frequencies to make basic
tones.

Sensors
The Circuit Playground Classic has a large number of sensor inputs that let you add all sorts of interactivity to your
project.

Light Sensor
There is an analog light sensor, part number ALS-
PT19 (https://adafru.it/tC2), in the top left part of the
board. This can be used to detect ambient light, with
similar spectral response to the human eye.
This sensor is connect to analog pin A5 and will read
between 0 and 1023 with higher values corresponding
to higher light levels. A reading of about 300 is common
for most indoor light levels.
With some clever code, you can use this as a color
sensor or even a pulse sensor!

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 12 of 36

 Temperature Sensor
There is an NTC thermistor (Murata NCP15XH103F03RC)
that we use for temperature sensing. While it isn't an all-
in-one temperature sensor, with linear output, it's easy
to calculate the temperature based on the analog
voltage on analog pin #A0. There's a 10K resistor
connected to it as a pull down.

Microphone Audio Sensor

A MEMS microphone can be used to detect audio levels
and even perform basic FFT functions. You can read the
analog voltage corresponding to the audio on analog
pin #A4. Note that this is the raw analog audio
waveform! When it's silent there will be a reading of
~330 and when loud the audio will read between 0 and
800 or so. Averaging and smoothing must be done to
convert this to sound-pressure-level.

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 13 of 36

 Motion Sensor
We can sense motion with an accelerometer. This
sensor detects acceleration which means it can be used
to detect when its being moved around, as well as
gravitational pull in order to detect orientation.
A LIS3DH 3-axis XYZ accelerometer is in the dead
center of the board and you can use it to detect tilt,
gravity, motion, as well as 'tap' and 'double tap' strikes
on the board. The LIS3DH is connected to the hardware
SPI pins (to leave the I2C pins free) and has the CS pin
on digital pin #8 and an optional interrupt output on
digital pin #7 (also known as IRQ #4)

Capacitive Touch
The CPC has some resistor pullups and an extra pin that
gives it the ability to perform capacitive touch readings.
This is a great way to sense human touch without
additional components. Even animals will work if its
directly touching their skin!
On the Classic you get eight capacitive touch pads (all
GPIO pads)

Switches & Buttons

There are two large buttons, connected to digital #19

(Left) and #5 (Right) each. These are pulled to ground
when not pressed, and connected to 3.3V when
pressed, so they read HIGH.

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 14 of 36

 This small button in the center of the board is for
Resetting the board. You can use this button to restart
or reset the CPC.
Press this button once to reset, double-click to enter the
bootloader manually.

There is a single slide switch near the center of the

Circuit Playground. It is connected to digital #21 and will
read LOW when slid to the left, and HIGH when in the
right hand position

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 15 of 36

Pinouts
Despite having only 14 pads with 8 general purpose I/O pins available, there are a lot of possibilities with Circuit
Playground Classic. We went over all the internals in the last page. On this page we'll go through each pin/pad to
explain what you can do with it.

No external I/O pads are shared with internal sensors/devices, so you do not need to worry about 'conflicting' pins or
interactions!

Power Pads

There are 6 power pads available, equally spaced around the perimeter.

GND - there are 3 x Ground pads. They are all connected together, and are all the signal/power ground
connections
3.3V - there are two 3.3 Volt output pads. They are connected to the output of the onboard regulator. The
regulator can provide about 500mA max, but that includes all the built in parts too! So you should roughly budget
about 300mA available for your usage (450mA if you are not using the onboard NeoPixels)
VBATT - there is one Voltage Output pad. This is a special power pad,it will be connected to either the USB
power or the battery input, whichever has the higher voltage. This output does not connect to the regulator so
you can draw as much current as your USB port / Battery can provide.

Input/Output Pads
Next we will cover the 8 GPIO (General Purpose Input Ouput) pins! For reference you may want to also check out the
datasheet-reference in the downloads section for the core ATMEGA32U4 pin. We picked pins that have a lot of
capabilities.

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 16 of 36

Common to all pads
All the GPIO pads can be used as digital inputs, digital outputs, for LEDs, buttons and switches. In addition, all can be
used as analog inputs (10-bit ADC). All pads can be used for hardware capacitive touch.

Each pad can provide up to ~20mA of current. Don't connect a motor or other high-power component directly to the
pins! Instead, use a transistor to power the DC motor on/off

All of the GPIO pads are 3.3V output level, and should not be used with 5V inputs. In general, most 5V devices are OK
with 3.3V output though.

All of the pads are completely 'free' pins, they are not used by the USB connection, LEDs, sensors, etc so you never
have to worry about interfering with them when programming.

D6, D9, D10 and D11 can be analog inputs

D3, D6, D9 and D10 can be PWM outputs
D0, D1, D2 and D3 can be hardware interrupt input

Each Pin!
Let's start with #10 which is in the top right corner, and work our way clockwise

D10 / A10 - This pin can be digital I/O, or Analog Input. This pin has PWM output
D9 / A9 - This pin can be digital I/O, or Analog Input. This pin has PWM output.
D6 / A7 - This pin can be digital I/O, or Analog Input. This pin has PWM output.
D12 / A11 - This pin can be digital I/O, or Analog Input.
D1 - This pin can be digital I/O, it is also used for Hardware Serial Transmit, and can be an interrupt input.
D0 - This pin can be digital I/O, it is also used for Hardware Serial Receive, and can be an interrupt input.

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 17 of 36

 D2 - This pin can be digital I/O, it is also the I2C SDA pin, and can be an interrupt input
D3 - This pin can be digital I/O or PWM output, it is also the I2C SCL pin, and can be an interrupt input

Internally Used Pins!

These are the names of the pins that are used for built in sensors and such!

D4 - Left Button A
D5 - Speaker PWM output
D7 - Accelerometer interrupt
D13 - Red LED
D17 - Built-in 10 NeoPixels
D19 - Right Button B
D21 - Slide Switch
A0 - Temperature Sensor
A4 - Microphone sound sensor
A5 - Light Sensor

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 18 of 36

Windows Driver Installation
Mac and Linux do not require drivers, only Windows folks need to do this step

Before you plug in your board, you'll need to possibly install a driver!

Click below to download our Driver Installer.

Download Adafruit Windows Driver Installer

v2.0.0.0
https://adafru.it/zek

Download and run the installer.

Run the installer! Since we bundle the SiLabs and FTDI drivers as well, you'll need to click through the license

Select which drivers you want to install, we suggest selecting all of them so you don't have to do this again!

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 19 of 36

On Windows 7, by default, we install a single driver for most of Adafruit's boards, including the Feather 32u4, the
Feather M0, Feather M0, Express, Circuit Playground, Circuit Playground Express, Gemma M0, Trinket M0, Metro M0
Express. On Windows 10 that driver is not necessary (it's built in to Windows) and it will not be listed.

The Trinket / Pro Trinket / Gemma / USBtinyISP drivers are also installed by default.

You can also, optionally, install the Arduino Gemma (different than the Adafruit Gemma!), Huzzah and Metro 328
drivers.

Click Install to do the installin'.

Note that on Windows 10, support for many boards is built in. If you end up not checking any boxes, you don't
need to run the installer at all!

Manual Driver Installation

If windows needs the driver files (inf/cat) for some reason you can get all the drivers in a zip by clicking below:

Adafruit Windows Drivers source (v2.0.0.0)

https://adafru.it/zel

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 20 of 36

And point windows to the Drivers folder when it asks for the driver location

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 21 of 36

Arduino

Arduino is an open-source electronics platform based on easy-to-use hardware and software. Arduino boards are
able to read inputs - light on a sensor, a finger on a button, or a Twitter message - and turn it into an output -
activating a motor, turning on an LED, publishing something online. You can tell your board what to do by sending
a set of instructions to the microcontroller on the board. To do so you use the Arduino programming language
(based on Wiring), and the Arduino Software (IDE), based on Processing.

-- https://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/Introduction

Arduino has over a decade of projects and history, so you'll find a lot of existing code that you can use with your Circuit
Playground Classic.

Since Circuit Playground is now built into Arduino, it's great for beginners - and you can take advantage of the huge
Arduino community.

For experts - Arduino is essentially C/C++ with a built in library of hardware interfaces. You can embed assembly, write
ultra-fast code, and twiddle registers.

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 22 of 36

Set Up & Test Arduino
The Circuit Playground Classic is 'natively' supported in the Arduino IDE so its really easy to set up!

Download Latest Arduino IDE

Download the latest Arduino IDE, version 1.8.5 or greater is required!

You can also use Arduino Create, in which case the IDE is already the latest version

Download Arduino IDE

https://adafru.it/fvm

Install Drivers (Windows 7 Only)

When you plug in the board, you'll need to possibly install a driver

Click here to download our Driver Installer

Blink
Now you can upload your first blink sketch!

Open up the Blink example from the Arduino IDE

Select Circuit Playground from the Tools -> Board dropdown menul

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 23 of 36

Plug in the Circuit Playground and wait for it to be recognized by the OS (just takes a few seconds). It will create a
serial/COM port, you can now select it from the dropdown, it'll even be 'indicated' as a Circuit Playground board!

And click upload! That's it, you will be able to see the LED blink rate change as you adapt the delay() calls.

If you are having issues, make sure you selected the matching Board in the menu that matches the hardware
you have in your hand.

Manually bootloading
Once it is in bootloader mode, you can select the newly created COM/Serial port and re-try uploading.

If you ever get in a 'weird' spot with the bootloader, or you have uploaded code that crashes and doesn't auto-reboot
into the bootloader, click the RESET button twice (like a double-click) to get back into the bootloader.

The red LED will pulse so you know that its in bootloader mode.

In the Arduino IDE, re-select the Serial Port to the new port that has been created for the bootloader.

Then upload Blink - make sure that works!

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 24 of 36

Once that works, go back and re-select the 'normal' USB serial port next time you want to use the normal upload.

Ubuntu & Linux Issue Fix

Note if you're using Ubuntu 15.04 (or perhaps other more recent Linux distributions) there is an issue with the modem
manager service which causes the Bluefruit LE micro to be difficult to program. If you run into errors like "device or
resource busy", "bad file descriptor", or "port is busy" when attempting to program then you are hitting this issue.

The fix for this issue is to make sure Adafruit's custom udev rules are applied to your system. One of these rules is
made to configure modem manager not to touch the Feather board and will fix the programming difficulty issue.
Follow the steps for installing Adafruit's udev rules on this page.

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 25 of 36

Circuit Playground Library
We wrapped up everything you need to run Arduino code on your Circuit Playground is wrapped up into a tidy library
that integrates all the sensing and lighting.

Installing Via Library Manager

The Circuit Playground library is available on the Adafruit GitHub website. but what's nice is that Arduino IDE comes
with a version of the library and its super easy to update.

We recommend updating the library even if you just installed the Arduino IDE, we have constant updates!

In the menubar click "Sketch", then "Include

Library"

At the top, click "Manage Libraries. . ."

Type Circuit in the search box. You should see Adafruit Circuit Playground listed.

Then click Update to get the very latest version!

Run the Demo

Now that you have the library installed you can continue.

Follow the Arduino Set Up guide page to make sure you can Blink upload. Once that's known to work, come back

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 26 of 36

here.

Select the Circuit Playground Board

Under the Tools -> Board submenu, pick Adafruit Circuit Playground

Select the matching Port

Under Tools->Port select the port that is labeled (Circuit Playground)

Load the Demo Program

OK you're now ready to load the demo. Under File->Examples locate Adafruit Circuit Playground and then select the
demo program.

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 27 of 36

Compile/Verify the Demo
Click the Verify button (also the Sketch->Verify menu item) to compile/verify the demo. Make sure you get "Done
compiling." and no errors

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 28 of 36

Upload Demo
Click the Upload button to upload the code

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 29 of 36

You should get a Done uploading. message in the blue statusbar

You can now run the serial console to get data output:

You'll get information such as:

"Capacitive touch" readings for all 8 outer pads (under 50 means not touched, over 100 usually means the pads
are touched)
Slide switch location (left or right)
If the Right and Left buttons are pressed
Light sensor readings, higher values mean more light
Sound sensor readings
X, Y and Z accelerometer readings
Temperature in Celsius

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 30 of 36

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 31 of 36
HELP!
I just plugged it in and I can't seem to connect to my Circuit Playground with Arduino!
99% of initial problems with circuit playground are due to having charge USB cables instead of sync cables. Do not
use a cable you've only used for charging a phone. Make sure its a cable that can pass data as well as power.
Lately, there's been a lot of products shipped with charging only cables and it's very confusing because the Circuit
Playground lights up but does not show up in the Arduino IDE!

So, please, try multiple USB cables, and if you find a charge-only cable, cut it in half and throw it away so you will
not make the mistake again!

Ack! I "did something" and now when I plug in the Circuit Playground it doesn't show up as a device anymore so I
cant upload to it or fix it...
No problem! You can 'repair' a bad code upload easily. Note that this can happen if you set a watchdog timer or
sleep mode that stops USB, or any sketch that 'crashes' your Circuit Playground

1. Turn on verbose upload in the Arduino IDE preferences

2. Plug in Circuit Playground, it won't show up as a COM/serial port that's ok
3. Open up the Blink example (Examples->Basics->Blink)
4. Select the correct board in the Tools menu, e.g. Circuit Playground (make sure you select the correct board)
5. Compile it (make sure that works)
6. Click Upload to attempt to upload the code
7. The IDE will print out a bunch of COM Ports as it tries to upload. During this time, double click the reset
button, you'll see the red pulsing LED that tells you its now in bootloading mode
8. The Cplay will show up as the Bootloader COM/Serial port
9. The IDE should see the bootloader COM/Serial port and upload properly

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 32 of 36

I can't get the Circuit Playground USB device to show up - I get "USB Device Malfunctioning" errors!
This seems to happen when people select the wrong board from the Arduino Boards menu. Make sure you select
Circuit Playground! Do not use anything else, do not use the 32u4 breakout board line.

Use the 'repair' technique above to fix it.

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 33 of 36

Downloads
Windows Driver Software
Available here

Source
Arduino Circuit Playground interfacing library
Adafruit Board Support Pkg (Should be installed via the Board Manager!)
PCB Files in EagleCAD format
Fritzing object available in the Adafruit Fritzing Library

Datasheets
Microcontroller datasheet
Buzzer datasheet
MEMS microphone datasheet
Thermistor datasheet

Schematic

Fabrication Print
Dims in inches

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 34 of 36

© Adafruit Industries https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-circuit-playground Page 35 of 36