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Monday Microcontroller: Adafruit Clue
- throwaway81523 5y agoNote: Article is from June 2020. Nice article. The Clue is a more powerful version of the BBC MicroBit in the same form factor, that runs CircuitPython and has a lot of sensors (SHT, acceleromters, gyro, etc.), Bluetooth wireless, and a tiny TFT display (1.3" 240x240). It's on the expensive side at $40 but you get a lot of stuff in there. Unfortunately, like so many other boards of this type, it lacks a realtime clock (the Sensortag had it). That makes it hard to use for environmental logging which would otherwise be an obvious application. It does have Stemma QT ports (I2C with a standardized tiny JST-PH connector, lots of plug-in peripherals available) and I think Adafruit sells an RTC board in that format, but it's more stuff to deal with. Power consumption is not stated. The Sensortag had a much weaker CPU, but it was able to run for something like a year on a CR2032 coin cell. It had some annoying drawbacks and was never popular, but I keep waiting for someone to make a newer modernized version. The Clue has been around for a while but I suspect it hasn't been that popular, because of its high cost and because the Micro:bit itself never really caught on. The Raspberry Pi Pico is getting more traction, I think. Maybe Adafruit or someone can do an RP2040-based version of the Clue someday. The article is useful in informing about the Clue's capabilities, which aren't breathtaking but are a useful combo that's not that easy to find in a convenient package. I had been aware of its existence but didn't realize it had quite so many sensors, so this gives it a little more of my attention.