The USB Jack is next up in our tour
USB Jack
As we talked about in the beginning, this is how you connect your Arduino to your computer. You can use any computer with a USB port. You will need a cable to connect! This cable is usually not included.
Make sure you have a Micro USB cable
I can't stress it enough. Make sure you have a good USB cable. Naughty USB cables will really ruin your day, like a stone in your shoe. Just thow out bad cables and replace with a good one - they are designed to be disposable!
USB Interface Chip??
If you're coming from any background with an Arduino you're used to having a secondary chip on the circuit board that acts as the USB to Serial Interface Translator chip. Circuit Playground does not have one of these! That's because the ATmega32u4 processor does the USB for you natively without the need for a second chip. There's a few tradeoffs, in particular you may need to reset the chip if the USB crashes but you'll learn how to do that
Powering over USB
For permanent installation, you can power your Circuit Playground using a USB wall adapter - these come with almost every phone and gadget these days. They have a nice clean 5V output. Some have an output up to 5.5V but thats OK. Basically, if it has a USB connection it will power your 'play just fine!
You can sometimes power an Circuit Playground project off of a portable USB power pack but these packs are often designed to charge a phone and the 'Play uses so little power that it will cause the pack to think that it is "done charging" and auto-shutoff
So, try it out but your mileage may vary.
Page last edited March 08, 2024
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