The Adafruit Sparkle Motion is the flagship in our series of "Sparkle Motion" boards, which are our attempt to make the best small WLED-friendly smart LED driving board in the whole world. Our resident mermaid, firepixie makes a lot of projects with WLED and she loves it! So how can we make something that will be powerful enough to drive advanced LED projects with built-in sensors?
This version has a built-in antenna so it's ready to go out-of-the-box.
This board has everything you could possibly want for big, small, or even massive WLED/xLights projects:
Power option 1 via USB Type C PD with a slide switch that selects between 5, 12 and 20V (24V pixels can usually run fine at 20V)
Low forward-voltage diodes so its good for up to 5A from either
5 Amp fuse to protect from over-current drive
ESP32 mini module with built in antenna port - the classic ESP32 has the best WLED support even if we'd prefer the 'S2 or 'S3. Comes with 4 MB of flash, dual core 240MHz Tensilica, WiFi, Bluetooth LE and Bluetooth Classic support.
USB-serial converter with auto-reset
Three output signal terminal block sets with power and ground for each - they'll be level shifted to 5V. Use 26-20AWG stranded or solid core wires, 5A rated.
6 GPIO breakout pads with a fourth level-shifted output, and 3 more GPIO plus power and ground.
Built-in I2S microphone for audio-reactive projects with digital-quality audio
Built-in IR receiver for easy remote control integration
Stemma QT I2C port to connect external sensors/OLED/etc.
Separate analogue/digital input JST port for analogue input, potentiometer, microphone or external IR receiver
User button on GPIO 0 plus Reset button
Red built-in LED on pin 4
Small built-in NeoPixel on pin 2
Compact enough you can use it for wearable projects - 1.3"x1.75" / 33mm x 45mm size with mounting holes
To make it super fast to get started, terminal blocks are pre-installed: use any 20-26 AWG stranded or solid core wires with a flat-head screwdriver to attach semi-permanently.
While we recommend it for use with WLED, it will also work just fine as a compact ESP32 board for use with Arduino, ESP-IDF, MicroPython, CircuitPython or any other ESP32-supported codebase.
If you're looking for the same board but with a wFL external antenna, click here
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