Adafruit's Itsy Bitsy series of embedded platforms represent excellent value for their functionality and IO count. Measuring 1.4" by 0.7", they are similar in size to Adafruit's Trinket line of products but differ in that each board features a much higher pin count and either a microcontroller or microprocessor with native USB functionality built in for more robust USB bootloading and serial communications.
The Microchip based ATMEGA32u4 microcontroller versions come in 3.3 V and 5 V power and logic levels. This line of boards also features boards with ATSAMD51 Cortex®-m4 and ATSAMD21G18 M0+ 32-bit processors with 3 V logic and power, which can be used with the Arduino IDE and Adafruit's CircuitPython.
All 3.3 V boards in this line have been designed with one pin labeled VHIGH, which outputs the voltage level of USB or battery input, whichever is higher. As an added benefit, there are diodes installed to prevent backfeeding, allowing the board to switch over to a battery backup automatically if USB power is removed. They also feature one pin that is output only, which has an HCT1G125 voltage buffer being used as a 5 V logic level translator for driving devices that require 5 V logic levels.
These boards are made with the same footprint and mostly standardized pin function, with some minor differences, in a popular breadboard-friendly dip form factor.
| Itsy Bitsy 32U4 Features |
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Itsy Bitsy M4 Express Features |
- ATMEGA32u4 8-bit microcontroller
- Options include 3.3 V power and logic running at 8 MHz, or 5 V option at 16 MHz
- Available library support for HID keyboard, mouse, MIDI, or USB CDC serial device by default
- 23 GPIO pins
- IO includes:
- 12 analog input pins with double I/O, some featuring PWM output
- SPI port
- I2C port
- UART
- 4 pins with PWM
Itsy Bitsy 32U4 3 V option also includes:
- VHIGH pin with higher voltage than VBAT or USB inputs, for use with Neopixels, Servos, or other high-current devices
- 5 V buffered logic level output for logic translating to higher level devices
Itsy Bitsy M0 Express Features
- ATSAMD21G18 32-bit Cortex-M0+ with 256 KB Flash and 32 KB RAM
- 3.3 V logic and power
- 48 MHz 32-bit processor
- 2 MB SPI Flash external memory
- 23 GPIO pins
- IO includes:
- 10-bit analog to digital converter
- 13 PWM output pins
- 11x 12-bit analog inputs
- VHIGH pin with higher voltage than VBAT or USB inputs, for use with Neopixels, Servos, or other high-current devices
- 5 V buffered logic level output for logic translating to higher level devices
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- ATSAMD51 32-bit Cortex-M4
- 3.3 V logic and power
- 120 MHz 32-bit processor
- DSP and floating point processing
- 512 KB Flash, 192 KB RAM memory
- 2 MB SPI Flash external memory
- 23 GPIO pins
- IO includes:
- 2 channels of 1 MSPS 12-bit digital-to-analog conversion
- 2 channels of 1 MSPS 12-bit analog-to-digital conversion
- Six serial communication interfaces (SERCOM), all individually configurable for:
- USART full or half duplex communication
- I2C with speeds as high as 3.4 MHz
- SPI
- LIN slave (local interconnect network)
- 8-bit parallel capture controller (for camera/video input)
- VHIGH pin with higher voltage than VBAT or USB inputs, for use with Neopixels, Servos, or other high-current devices
- 5 V buffered logic level output for logic translating to higher level devices
- AES: 256-bit cryptography featuring RNG, Pubkey controller
- Native USB supported in every OS, allowing use in Arduino, CircuitPython as USB serial console, keyboard/house HID
- DotStart LED included on the board
- Comes preloaded with a bootloader that shows up as USB storage when plugged into USB, plug and play - no installation required
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