Choose the Best Board for Wearables
There are plenty of boards to choose for your next wearable electronics project, and ultimately the best one is whichever fits your project’s unique constraints. To help narrow it down, here are five of the strongest contenders, plus a few that are too good to leave out.
LilyPad Arduino USB
LilyPad Arduino is the original flavor of sewable circuit boards, developed by Dr. Leah Buechley and SparkFun Electronics. Since 2008, the original LilyPad design has inspired many other circular, hand-sewable boards. LilyPad Arduino USB is the latest version, featuring an ATmega32U4 microcontroller chip with built-in USB support, an on/off switch, and a JST connector for LiPo batteries.
Adafruit Flora
Flora V3 is Adafruit’s dedicated wearable electronics board, and the smallest full-featured one around. Flora has the same ATmega32U4 chip with USB support, plus beginner-proof power management that accepts a versatile range of 3.5V to 16V DC. A full-color NeoPixel LED is perfect for providing visual feedback when you’re debugging your wearable on the go.
Adafruit Circuit Playground Express
CPX is the PCB equivalent of a Mary Poppins bag: Just when you think you’ve explored all the features on this board, you discover there are more! While not intended for wearables, it’s currently by far my favorite all-in-one board for wearables and e-textiles. Packed with on-board sensors and actuators, its powerful ATSAMD21 Arm Cortex-M0 processor can be programmed in (at least) three different ways. Connections aren’t limited to conductive thread; other methods demonstrated in the Adafruit Learning System include a bolt-on kit that doesn’t require any soldering!
Arduino Nano family
New Arduino Nano boards are released almost every year, and the newer ones have become favorites for classroom kits involving wireless communication. The Arduino Nano 33 IoT has been a go-to in recent years, featuring the ATSAMD21 processor, both Wi-Fi and BLE, and an on-board accelerometer/IMU for motion tracking. For wearables, the headerless version works well in small spaces and it can be powered by a power bank via USB.
Adafruit Feather family
With their extensive variety of both main boards and accessory “wing” boards, working with Feathers feels like building a circuit with a PCB card deck of superpowers. Processor choices include ATmega32u4, M0, M4, ESP32, RP2040, and the new RP2350; radios include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GSM cellular, LoRa, and more. Short stacking headers, doubler/tripler prototyping boards, and Stemma QT connectors are all options for packing a lot of functionality into a small, robust package, perfect for fitting in a case or pocket of a wearable.
Dave’s Faves
Adafruit’s Circuit Playground Express (CPX) is featured as a go-to for both education and wearables, so I’ll point you to her similarly SAMD21-based quarter-dollar-sized sister, Gemma M0.
Along with the Seeed Xiao and Adafruit QT Py range, DFRobot’s diminutive Beetle ESP32 C3 is a great choice when size counts, and comes with a fantastic little expansion board for petite prototyping. —DG
This article appeared in Make: Vol. 91.
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