Adafruit Sparkle Motion with wFL External Antenna – WLED and xLights Board

The Adafruit Sparkle Motion with wFL Antenna 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 support for an EXTERNAL antenna, which is NOT included! You will need an antenna kit such as our wFL to RP-SMA adapter plus an RP-SMA 2.4GHz antenna.

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)
• Power option 2 via 2.1mm DC jack, centre positive
• Low forward-voltage diodes so it’s good for up to 5A from either
• 5 Amp fuse to protect from over-current drive
• ESP32 mini module with wFL external 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 that you can use it for wearable projects – 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.

We also stock the mini version of this board. Click here to see it in our store. If you’re looking for the same board with a PCB antenna instead, click here

Specifications

• Dimensions: 54.7mm x 33.2mm x 10.3mm
• Weight: 12.7g