The Adafruit Sparkle Motion Mini is a miniature board with a lot of sparkly features. This page covers it all!
PrettyPins PDF on GitHub.
- USB-C port - This is used for both powering and programming the board. You can power it with any USB C cable. It is a 5V 4A input - you can use off-the-shelf USB battery packs for portable operation. It is connected to a 4 Amp resetting fuse to protect from over-current drive.
- 5V - This pin, located in the bottom right corner of the board, is the output from the 5V regulator. Its meant to power your 5V pixels.
- Power LED - The green LED, located in the bottom right corner on the front of the board, indicates when the board is powered up.
- G - This is the common ground for all power and logic.
- 3.3V - This pin, located in the top right corner of the board, is the output from the 3.3V regulator. It can supply 500mA peak.
The processor on the Sparkle Motion Mini is an ESP32 mini module. The classic ESP32 has the best WLED support. Comes with 4 MB of flash, dual core 240MHz Tensilica, WiFi, Bluetooth LE and Bluetooth Classic support.
On the right edge of the board are two NeoPixel output signals. Both signals are level shifted to 5V and are on 0.1" spaced breakout pads.
- 32 - GPIO32, available as D32 in CircuitPython and 32 in Arduino
- 33 - GPIO33, available as D33 in CircuitPython and 33 in Arduino.
The Sparkle Motion Mini has 4 general purpose "IO" pins broken out near the top of the board and 1 additional GPIO available via the 3-pin JST port at the bottom edge of the board.
- 14 - GPIO14. It uses ADC2. One of the capacitive touch pins. Available as D14 in CircuitPython and 14 in Arduino.
- 27 - GPIO27. It uses ADC2. One of the capacitive touch pins. Available as D27 in CircuitPython and 27 in Arduino.
-
25 - GPIO25. This is the UART TX (transmit) pin. Connect to the RX pin found on a breakout or device. This is separate than the 'debug UART' which is connected to the USB-to-Serial converter, so it will not interfere during upload. In Arduino, use
Serial1
. In CircuitPython, useboard.TX
. -
26 - GPIO26. This is the UART RX (receive) pin. Connect to the TX pin found on a breakout or device. This is separate than the 'debug UART' which is connected to the USB-to-Serial converter, so it will not interfere during upload. In Arduino, use
Serial1
. In CircuitPython, useboard.RX
. - 13 / JST port - GPIO13. It uses ADC2. One of the capacitive touch pins. Available as D13 or A0 in both CircuitPython and Arduino.
Note you cannot read analog inputs on ADC2 once WiFi has started, as it is shared with the WiFi hardware.
This JST SH 4-pin STEMMA QT connector breaks out I2C (SCL, SDA, 3.3V, GND). It allows you to connect to various breakouts and sensors with STEMMA QT connectors or to other things using assorted associated accessories. It works great with any STEMMA QT or Qwiic sensor/device. You can also use it with Grove I2C devices thanks to this handy cable.
- SCL - GPIO22
- SDA - GPIO19
You can access this I2C port with board.STEMMA_I2C()
in CircuitPython and Wire
in Arduino.
There are two LEDs you can control in code.
-
NeoPixel LED - This addressable RGB NeoPixel LED, labeled Neo on the board, can be controlled with code. It acts as a status LED in CircuitPython and is connected to GPIO18. It is available in CircuitPython as
board.NEOPIXEL
, and in Arduino asPIN_NEOPIXEL
. -
Red LED - This little red LED, labeled 12 on the board, is on or blinks during certain operations (such as pulsing when in the bootloader), and is controllable in code. It is available in CircuitPython as
board.LED
, and in Arduino asLED_BUILTIN
or12
.
There are two buttons on the Sparkle Motion Mini
- Reset button - This button restarts the board and helps enter the bootloader. You can click it once to reset the board without unplugging the USB cable or battery.Â
-
Boot button - This button can be read as an input in code. It is connected to pin GPIO0. It is available as
board.BUTTON
in CircuitPython, andBUTTON
in Arduino. Simply set it to be an input with a pullup. This button can also be used to put the board into ROM bootloader mode. To enter ROM bootloader mode, hold down boot button while clicking reset button mentioned above. When in the ROM bootloader, you can upload code and query the chip usingesptool
.
In the bottom left corner of the board is an I2S microphone, great for adding audio reactivity to your WLED projects. It uses three data pins:
- DATA - GPIO9
- WS - GPIO10
- BCLK - GPIO23
You can use the microphone with WLED and Arduino. There is no I2S input support in CircuitPython at this time.
The CH343 USB to serial converter communicates between the ESP32 and your computer over USB. It is a full-speed USB device interface and is USB 2.0 compatible. It has an auto-reset circuit that works perfectly with any ESP32 uploading tool. Sometimes these chips require drivers to be installed on your computer's operating system. We have a Learn Guide detailing how to install these drivers..
Page last edited January 27, 2025
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