Adafruit Feather M0 Bluefruit LE is an all in one Arduino-compatible Bluetooth Low Energy with built in USB and battery charging designed and produced by Adafruit. Feather is a new development board series from Adafruit. As the name suggests, Feather boards are thin and light. Feather is designed to be a new standard for open source development platforms.
Adafruit Feather M0 Bluefruit LE is based on ATSAMD21G18 ARM Cortex M0 processor clocked at 8 MHz and at 3.3V logic. ATSAMD21G18 ARM Cortex M0 has 256K flash and 32K RAM and built in USB support. Therefore this chip has USB-to-Serial program & debug capability readily (and there is no need for an FTDI-like chip).
Bluetooth Low Energy is the hottest new low-power, 2.4GHz spectrum wireless protocol. In particular, it’s the only wireless protocol that you can use with iOS without needing special certification and it's supported by all modern smart phones. This makes it excellent for use in portable projects that will make use of an iOS or Android phone or tablet. It also is supported in Mac OS X and Windows 8+.
The Bluefruit LE module is an nRF51822 chipset from Nordic, programmed with multi-function code that can do quite a lot! For most people, they'll be very happy to use the standard Nordic UART RX/TX connection profile. In this profile, the Bluefruit acts as a data pipe that can 'transparently' transmit back and forth from your iOS or Android device. You can use our iOS App or Android App, or write your own to communicate with the UART service.
The board is capable of much more than just sending strings over the air! Thanks to an easy to learn AT command set, you have full control over how the device behaves, including the ability to define and manipulate your own GATT Services and Characteristics, or change the way that the device advertises itself for other Bluetooth Low Energy devices to see. You can also use the AT commands to query the die temperature, check the battery voltage, and more, check the connection RSSI or MAC address, and tons more. Really, way too long to list here!
For easy use in portable projects, Adafruit added a connector suitable for their 3,7V Lithium polymer batteries and built in battery charging. There is no need for a battery because the board can be powered directly from the micro USB connector. If you want to use it with a battery, you are also free to run your project with a battery and then plug in the USB for the battery to be recharged. Feather boards will automatically switch over to USB power when it is available. The battery is also tied through a divider to an analog pin, so it is possible to measure and monitor the battery voltage and detect when it needs a recharge.
The board has a USB bootloader, so you can use it with the Arduino IDE. The pack also includes some headers for you to solder them and use in your projects or on your breadboard.
Note: USB cable and Li-Po battery are not included.
Adafruit Learn Link: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-feather-32u4-bluefruit-le
Adafruit Product Page: https://www.adafruit.com/products/2995