The Adafruit HalloWing M4 is a skull-shaped development board featuring a 120MHz ATSAMD51 microcontroller, 1.54" colour IPS display, capacitive touch inputs, motion sensor and NeoPixel LEDs for wearable electronics, Halloween props and interactive projects.
This is Hallowing..this is Hallowing... Hallowing! Hallowing! Following up on 2018's most-successful-skull-shaped development board, we UPPED our -skull-shaped development board game, and re-spinned (re-spun?) the HalloWing M0 into the HalloWing M4 with MORE of everything that makes this the spoooookiest dev board.
Are you the kind of person who doesn't like taking down the skeletons and spiders until after January? Well, we've got the development board for you. This is electronics at its most spooky! The Adafruit HalloWing M4 is a skull-shaped ATSAM521 board with a ton of extras built in to make for an adorable wearable, badge, development kit, or the engine for your next cosplay or prop.
On the front is a cute 1.54" sized 240x240 full colour IPS TFT. Compared to the HalloWing M0's 1.44" 128x128, this has 4x as many pixels and is IPS for great colour and brightness. Our default example code has our new fully-customizable spooky eye demo running but you can use it for anything you like to display in glorious colour.
There's also 4 fang-teeth below the display, these are analogue/capacitive touch inputs with big alligator-clip holes.
On the reverse is a smorgasbord of electronic goodies:
ATSAMD51J19 @ 120MHz with 3.3V logic/power - 512KB of FLASH + 192KB of RAM, can run Arduino or CircuitPython super fast
8 MB of SPI Flash for storing images, sounds, animations, whatever!
3-axis accelerometer (motion sensor)
Light sensor, reverse-mount so that it points out the front
Mono Class-D speaker driver for 4-8 ohm speakers, up to 1 Watt, connected to a 12-bit DAC on the SAMD51
Four side-light NeoPixel LEDs for cool underlighting effects
LiPoly battery port with built in recharging capability
USB port for battery charging, programming and debugging
Two female header strips with Feather-compatible pinout so you can plug any FeatherWings in
JST ports for Neopixels, sensor input, and I2C (you can fit I2C Grove connectors in here)
3.3V regulator with 500mA peak current output
Reset button
On-Off switch
OK so technically it's more like a really tricked-out Feather M4 Express than a Wing but we simply could not resist the HalloWing pun.
You can use the Hallowing similarly Feather M4 Express, it's got the same chip although the pins have been rearranged. We've got both Arduino and CircuitPython build support for it so you can pick your favourite development language! The extra 8 MB of SPI Flash is great for sound effects projects where you want to play up to 3 minutes of WAV files.
On each side of the Hallowing are JST-PH plugs for connecting external devices. The 3-pin JSTs connect to analogue pins on the SAMD51, so you can use them for analogue inputs. We label one for NeoPixel and one for Sensors since we think most people will have one of each. The 4-pin JST connector connects to the I2C port and you can fit Grove connectors in it for additional hardware support.
Does not come with a Lipoly battery! We recommend the 500mAh batteries but any 3.7/4.2V Adafruit Lipoly will do the trick.
Comes fully assembled and ready to be your spooky skull friend. We install the UF2 bootloader on it so updating code and converting it to CircuitPython is easy.
Features
Skull-shaped ATSAMD51J19 development board running at 120MHz with 3.3V logic
512KB FLASH memory and 192KB RAM
8MB SPI Flash for storing images, sounds and animations
1.54" 240x240 full colour IPS TFT display (4x pixels of previous model)
Four capacitive touch inputs below display with alligator-clip holes
3-axis accelerometer for motion sensing
Light sensor with front-facing reverse mount
Mono Class-D speaker driver up to 1 Watt for 4-8 ohm speakers
Four side-mounted NeoPixel LEDs for underglow effects
LiPoly battery port with integrated charging capability
USB port for charging, programming and debugging
Two female Feather-compatible header strips for FeatherWings expansion
JST connectors for NeoPixels, sensors and I2C (Grove compatible)
3.3V regulator with 500mA peak current output
Reset button and On-Off switch
Arduino and CircuitPython compatible
UF2 bootloader pre-installed
Fully assembled and ready to use
Battery not included
Revision History
As of October 4, 2023 - HalloWing may come with black or tan JST connectors.
As of March 15, 2023 - the PCB no longer comes in our special edition Halloween orange; it now comes in a gothy black colour.
As of Feb 22, 2022 - This board comes with an MSA311 instead of MSA301 sensor. They are both equivalent accelerometers. Adafruit_Arcada will support either sensor, the MSA301 is no longer made.
