What is the Circuit Playground Express?

The Adafruit Circuit Playground Express is an inexpensive, yet versatile microcontroller with a rich set of input and output devices that comes built-in with the device. The following are some of the main hardware features present in this device:

• 10 mini NeoPixels, each with the ability to display a full range of colors
• As motion sensor (triple-axis accelerometer with tap detection and free-fall detection)
• A temperature sensor
• A light sensor
• A sound sensor
• A mini speaker
• Two push buttons, which are labeled A and B
• A slide switch
• An infrared receiver and transmitter
• Eight alligator-clip friendly input/output pins
• Supports I2C and PWM output
• Seven capacitive touch inputs
• A red LED
• A reset button
• An ATSAMD21 ARM Cortex M0 processor, running at 3.3 V and 48 MHz
• 2 MB of flash storage
• A micro USB port for connecting to a PC

These will be the only required devices for eight chapters. Later chapters will introduce a different set of devices.