Adafruit CLUE User Manual

A colorful CLUE slideshow purse with Bright Wearables

Created by Anne Barela

Last updated on 2021-02-08 06:57:50 PM EST

2 3

3 5

7

9 9

11

11 11 11

14

14 14

15

15 15 16 16

Guide Contents

Guide Contents Overview

Adafruit Parts Bags

CircuitPython on CLUE

Set up CircuitPython Quick Start!

CLUE CircuitPython Libraries Installing CircuitPython Libraries on your CLUE Code

Libraries Text Editor Code and Sample Graphics

Assembly

Place the Bright Board into Your Wearable Inserting CLUE into the Bright Board

Use

LED Ring Display Picture Slideshow Power Enjoy

Overview

Wearable electronics clothing and accessories continue to remain very popular with designers and fashion lovers alike. Adafruit has featured a great number of wearable projects. Many of them have required sewing skills, electronic skills or both.

Bright Wearables (https://adafru.it/JBM) is a recent company that has designed a board which interfaces

with a BBC micro:bit or Adafruit CLUE board. The Bright Board may be incorporated into one's own designs or paired with a number of backpack and handbag styles specifically designed to highlight the multicolored, programmable LEDs and the board's display.

This project pairs a Bright Wearables crossbody bag and Bright Board with the Adafruit CLLE to provide a colorful, changeable picture display surrounded by lights. It would look great shopping, socializing or for nightlife.

Adafruit Parts

Your browser does not support the video tag. Adafruit CLUE - nRF52840 Express with Bluetooth LE

Do you feel like you just don't have a CLUE? Well, we can help with that - get a CLUE here at Adafruit by picking up this sensor-packed development board. We wanted to build some... $39.95 In Stock

Add to Cart

USB cable - USB A to Micro-B

This here is your standard A to micro-B USB cable, for USB 1.1 or 2.0. Perfect for connecting a PC to your Metro, Feather, Raspberry Pi or other dev-board or... $2.95 In Stock

Add to Cart

Alkaline AA batteries (LR6) - 3 pack

Battery power for your portable project! These batteries are good quality at a good price, and work fantastic with any of the kits or projects in the shop that use AAs. This is a pack... $2.25 In Stock

Bags

1 x Bright Wearables Bright Board Main LED board with power

1 x Bright Wearables Grace Bag Comes in three colors, Bright Board not included

1 x Bright Wearables Grace Bundle The Grace purse and the Bright Board (no micro:bit included)

This project uses the Bright Board (https://adafru.it/JBN) by BrightWearables.com. The board works with both the BBC micro:bit and Adafruit CLUE. It contains 12 nice RGB DotStar LEDs in a circle, an on/off switch and a battery pack.

You can place the Bright Board into your own purse or wearable with the knowledge that all the electronics are safe from jostling (no finicky metallic thread like in some projects).

Bright Wearables sells purses and backpacks (https://adafru.it/JBO) specifically made to have the Bright Board snap in. This project uses the Grace crossbody phone bag (https://adafru.it/JBP) (which comes in three colors). All the bags allow the LEDs and the micro:bit/CLUE display to show through the bag.

The bags and the Bright Board may be purchased as a bundle. For this project, selecting a bundle with the

Add to Cart

Buy Now

bag of your choice + the Bright Board without the micro:bit board may be what you want.

Other products on BrightWearables.com (https://adafru.it/JBO)

CircuitPython on CLUE

CircuitPython (https://adafru.it/tB7) is a derivative of MicroPython (https://adafru.it/BeZ) designed to

simplify experimentation and education on low-cost microcontrollers. It makes it easier than ever to get prototyping by requiring no upfront desktop software downloads. Simply copy and edit files on the CIRCUITPY flash drive to iterate.

The following instructions will show you how to install CircuitPython. If you've already installed CircuitPython but are looking to update it or reinstall it, the same steps work for that as well!

Set up CircuitPython Quick Start!

Follow this quick step-by-step for super-fast Python power :)

https://adafru.it/IHF

Click the link above to download the latest version of

CircuitPython for the CLUE.

Download and save it to your desktop (or wherever is handy).

Plug your CLUE into your computer using a known-good USB cable.

A lot of people end up using charge-only USB cables and it

is very frustrating! So make sure you have a USB cable you

know is good for data sync.

Double-click the Reset button on the top (magenta arrow) on your board, and you will see the NeoPixel RGB LED (green arrow) turn green. If it turns red, check the USB cable, try another USB port, etc. Note: The little red LED next to the USB connector will pulse red. That's ok!

If double-clicking doesn't work the first time, try again. Sometimes it can take a few tries to get the rhythm right!

https://adafru.it/IHF

You will see a new disk drive appear called CLUEBOOT.

Drag the adafruit-circuitpython-clue-etc.uf2 file to

CLUEBOOT.

The LED will flash. Then, the CLUEBOOT drive will disappear and a new disk drive called CIRCUITPY will appear.

If this is the first time you're installing CircuitPython or you're doing a completely fresh install after erasing the filesystem, you will have two files - boot_out.txt, and code.py, and one folder - lib on your CIRCUITPY drive.

If CircuitPython was already installed, the files present before reloading CircuitPython should still be present on your CIRCUITPY drive. Loading CircuitPython will not create new files if there was already a CircuitPython filesystem present.

That's it, you're done! :)

CLUE CircuitPython Libraries

The CLUE is packed full of features like a display and a ton of sensors. Now that you have CircuitPython installed on your CLUE, you'll need to install a base set of CircuitPython libraries to use the features of the board with CircuitPython.

Follow these steps to get the necessary libraries installed.

Installing CircuitPython Libraries on your CLUE

If you do not already have a lib folder on your CIRCUITPY drive, create one now.

Then, download the CircuitPython library bundle that matches your version of CircuitPython from CircuitPython.org.

https://adafru.it/ENC

The bundle downloads as a .zip file. Extract the file. Open the resulting folder.

Open the lib folder found within.

https://adafru.it/ENC

Once inside, you'll find a lengthy list of folders and .mpy files. To install a CircuitPython library, you drag the file or folder from the bundle lib folder to the lib folder on your CIRCUITPY drive.

Copy the following folders and files from the bundle lib folder to the lib folder on your CIRCUITPY drive:

adafruit_apds9960

adafruit_bmp280.mpy

adafruit_bus_device

adafruit_clue.mpy

adafruit_display_shapes

adafruit_display_text

adafruit_lis3mdl.mpy

adafruit_lsm6ds

adafruit_register

adafruit_sht31d.mpy

adafruit_slideshow.mpy

neopixel.mpy

Your lib folder should look like the image on the left. These libraries will let you run the demos in the CLUE guide.

Code

Libraries

Once your CLUE is set up with CircuitPython and library files in general, we'll add some project specific libraries.

From the library bundle you downloaded in that guide page, transfer any additional libraries shown here onto the CLUE's /lib directory on the CIRCUITPY drive:

adafruit_apds9960

adafruit_bus_device

adafruit_bmp280

adafruit_clue.py

adafruit_dotstar.mpy

adafruit_fancyled

adafruit_imageload

adafruit_lis3mdl.mpy

adafruit_lsm6ds.mpy

adafruit_register

adafruit_sht31d.mpy

adafruit_slideshow.mpy

neopixel.mpy

Text Editor

Adafruit recommends using the Mu editor for using your CircuitPython code with the CLUE boards. You can get more info in this guide (https://adafru.it/Jzc).

Alternatively, you can use any text editor that saves files.

Code and Sample Graphics

Use the Download: Project Zip link in the code window below to download the code and sample graphics files for this project. Unzip the files into a directory.

# Bright Wearables Purse Slideshow with FancyLED # Anne Barela for Adafruit Industries, February 2020 # MIT License

import board import adafruit_dotstar as dotstar from adafruit_clue import clue from adafruit_slideshow import SlideShow, PlayBackDirection import adafruit_fancyled.adafruit_fancyled as fancy

# Set the LED ring speed and brightness LED_SPEED = 0.2 # pick a number from 0 (no motion) to 1.0 (fastest!) BRIGHTNESS = 0.2 # pick a number from 0 (dark) to 1.0 (bright!)

# colors available are RED, YELLOW, ORANGE, GREEN, TEAL # CYAN, BLUE, PURPLE, MAGENTA, WHITE, BLACK, GOLD, PINK # AQUA, JADE, AMBER, VIOLET, SKY - pick any color set! # 3 to 5 colors looks best... palette = [clue.PINK, clue.GOLD, clue.JADE]

# For the Bright Wearables DotStar LED Ring num_leds = 12 pixels = dotstar.DotStar(board.P13, board.P15, num_leds, auto_write=False) offset = 0

# Create the BMP displayer slideshow = SlideShow(clue.display, None, folder="/", auto_advance=False)

# turn palette to fancytype for i, color in enumerate(palette): palette[i] = fancy.CRGB(*[x / 255 for x in color])

while True: if clue.button_b: slideshow.direction = PlayBackDirection.FORWARD slideshow.advance() if clue.button_a: slideshow.direction = PlayBackDirection.BACKWARD slideshow.advance()

# spin the LEDs for i in range(num_leds): # Load each pixel's color from the palette using an offset, run it # through the gamma function, pack RGB value and assign to pixel. color = fancy.palette_lookup(palette, offset + i / num_leds) color = fancy.gamma_adjust(color, brightness=BRIGHTNESS) pixels[i] = color.pack() pixels.show() offset += LED_SPEED / 10

Plug your CLUE into your computer via a known good USB cable. In your operating system's file explorer/finder, you should see a new flash drive named CIRCUITPY. Copy the code.py file and the three sample bmp files to the CLUE CIRCUITPY drive main (root) folder.

The files on your CLUE should be similar to the directory tree listed on this page. The first three files may not show up on a mac, they tell OSX to not put system files on the CLUE CIRCUITPY drive which might fill it up.

Assembly

Place the Bright Board into Your Wearable

Follow the instructions on brightwearables.com (https://adafru.it/JBR) on assembly of the Bright Board with your wearable. This includes:

Installing batteries in the battery case Plugging in the battery connector into the bottom of the Bright Board Inserting the Bright Board into your purse/backpack Securing the Bright Board with the built-in snaps.

Inserting CLUE into the Bright Board

Insert the CLUE into the slot in the Bright Board, so the CLUE display is facing the transparent window in the wearable (facing out) and the electronics laden side of CLUE faces in towards the bag. Please double check, as the CLUE can be inserted the other way around and that's not going to work. Also be sure the CLUE board is pressed firmly on both sides into the Bright Board slot so all the connections are made.

Use

The Bright Board has a handy on/off switch on the board. When switched on, the screen should show some brief boot information before displaying the first picture on screen and making the DotStar LEDs light up.

LED Ring Display

The DotStars cycle through three colors selected in the code. Up to five may be selected to look best:

# colors available are RED, YELLOW, ORANGE, GREEN, TEAL # CYAN, BLUE, PURPLE, MAGENTA, WHITE, BLACK, GOLD, PINK # AQUA, JADE, AMBER, VIOLET, SKY - pick any color set! # 3 to 5 colors looks best... palette = [clue.PINK, clue.GOLD, clue.JADE]

You may use Mu or a text editor to change the colors you like. The pictures you select and the color of the bag may guide your choice as to colors.

The colors will cycle through those chosen. Kind of an "Ambilight" type effect but the lights are not dependent on the picture chosen.

Picture Slideshow

The code will display the first bitmap it sees in the root directory of the CIRCUITPY drive. You may have as many pictures as you like, up to the capacity of the CIRCUITPY drive. All pictures should be 240 x 240 pixels square and saved in bitmap (BMP) format with a .bmp file extension.

The three sample bitmap files are in the GitHub repo (https://adafru.it/JBS) and if you selected Download:

Project Zip on the code page, the three files are in the zip file (or get them in the link in the line above).

To change the displayed image, you use the CLUE A and B buttons: B on the right side of the display advances to the next image, A on the left of the display goes back to the previous image. The buttons are not visible on the outside of the purse, but are easily pressed through the material. Only you will know the magic.

Power

The Bright Board has a convenient slide switch on it for power (circled in blue below). To turn on the lights, slide the switch on and turn it off to conserve power. If you decide to remove your CLUE board from the Bright Wearables board, please be sure to turn the power off to protect the electronics.

Enjoy

Enjoy your colorful wearable!

Adafruit CLUE User Manual

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual