Adafruit Sparkle Motion – All-In-One WLED and xLights Board

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)
• Power option 2 via 2.1mm DC jack, centre positive
• 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

Resources

• Primary Guide