AdaBox010 Featuring the NeoTrellis M4

The AdaBox010 from Adafruit comes with the NeoTrellis M4, which is an all-in-one USB, NeoPixel, Elastomer, and audio board. It's a 4x8 grid of silicone buttons with a NeoPixel-addressable RGB LED behind each one controlled by a SAMD51 Cortex®-M4 microcontroller running at 120 MHz. It also includes stereo audio channels and microphone input. Each Trellis M4 also comes with a precision triple-axis ADXL343 accelerometer from Analog Devices on-board, allowing the ability for projects to react to tilt, motion, or tapping.

The ADXL343 is a versatile 3-axis digital-output MEMS accelerometer with selectable measurement range, bandwidth, and is configurable along with built-in motion detection, making it suitable for sensing acceleration in a wide variety of applications. The ADXL343 measures acceleration with high resolution (13-bit) at up to ±16 g with output available through either an SPI (3- or 4-wire) or I²C digital interface. The multipurpose accelerometer can measure the static acceleration of gravity in tilt-sensing applications as well as dynamic acceleration resulting from motion or shock, and several special sensing functions are provided. Activity and inactivity sensing detect presence or lack of motion. Tap sensing detects single and double taps in any direction. Free-fall sensing detects if the device is falling. These functions can be mapped individually to either of two interrupt output pins.

The NeoTrellis M4 can be an all-in-one synthesizer, drum-machine/sequencer, expressive MIDI keyboard, audio filter, sampler, simple game machine, and so much more. Multiple tutorials and example projects are available from Adafruit, and the versatility of programming compatibility with CircuitPython and the Arduino IDE makes it easy to get started. The M4 MCU has a roomy 512 KB of Flash and 192 KB of SRAM, and Adafruit added a full 8 MB Flash chip onboard to provide space for files and audio clips. The board also has a built-in MAX4466 electret mic amplifier for mobile phone headsets.

Finally, a 4-pin JST hacking port is available for extra add-ons. The port is STEMMA and Grove-compatible and provides GND, 3.3 V power, and two pins that can be used for I²C, ADC, or a UART allowing for expansion.