Adafruit CLUE Express - nRF52840, Bluetooth LE

Adafruit Clue - a Micro:bit alike propelled by a nRF52840

The CLUE is a Micro:bit compatible form-factor (and Edge connector) designed with many improvement en sensors, a nice to have development board got young engineer. Want to build some projects with a graphical screen and lot of sensors? Here is the CLUE.

This board is made to be compatible with existing Micro:bit projects. It have the same shape, it has also the same edge-connector with 5 big pads (as the Micro:bit). The clue will fit into your existing robot kit or Micro:bit add-on.

Despite the same interface and the compatibility, the CLUE have been completely redesigned:

• Nordic nRF52840 Bluetooth LE processor : 1 MB of Flash, 256KB RAM, 64 MHz Cortex M4 processor
• A 240×240 Color TFT display : Offers 1.3" high resolution text and graphics.
• Wider battery voltage : any from 3 to 6V battery source. The CLUE fits internal regulator and protection diodes.
• Two A / B user buttons : as the Micro:bit plus one reset button
• Many sensors:
  
  • ST Micro series 9-DoF motion LSM6DS33 Accel/Gyro + LIS3MDL magnetometer
  • APDS9960 Proximity, Light, Color, and Gesture Sensor
  • PDM Microphone sound sensor
  • SHT Humidity
  • BMP280 temperature and barometric pressure/altitude
• RGB NeoPixel : a smart LED able to generate any colors
• 2 MB internal flash : a big storage for datalogging, images, fonts or CircuitPython code
• Buzzer/speaker : will play tones and beeps
• Two bright white LEDs : in front for illumination / color sensing.
• JST-SH connectors : compatible Qwiic / STEMMA QT. They can be used to adding more sensors, motor controllers, displays and any other board using I2C interface. You can also plug GROVE I2C sensors by using an adapter cable.
• Programmable : Arduino IDE or CircuitPython
• Dimension: 51.7mm x 42.2mm x 12.3mm
• Weight: 13gr

At this time there the CLUE does not support MakeCode or Scratch programming for the nRF52840 chipset.

While the CLUE Adafruit does the best for pin mapping on the Edge Connector, in most cases the Micro:bit code should be code may not be immediately compatible without adjustment, especially since only Arduino and CircuitPython are supported at this time.

The CLUE is designed for projects that use a ton of sensors! CLUE includes LOTs of sensor so you can start exploring, measuring, logging and learning out-od-the-box. You can transmit data over Bluetooth to a computer or mobile device for data plotting and logging, or save it to the built in storage.