Setup Circuit Playground Bluefruit

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A guide to setting up the Adafruit Circuit Playground Bluefruit for our curriculum.

What is the Circuit Playground BlueFruit?

The Circuit Playgroud Bluefruit is very similar to the Circuit Playgroud Express, except it has Bluetooth Low Energy support instead of infrared (IR)!

Adafruit also provides a free app on iOS and Android to interface with the device over Bluetooth.

Checking the Bootloader

CircuitPython.org provides .uf2 files which make it easy to install CircuitPython on the device. However, the Bluefruit devices may come with a much older bootloader. For example, if you run this:

$ cat /media/pi/CPLAYBTBOOT/INFO_UF2.TXT
UF2 Bootloader 0.2.9 lib/nrfx (v1.1.0-1-g096e770) lib/tinyusb (legacy-755-g55874813) s140 6.1.1
Model: Adafruit Feather nRF52840 Express
Board-ID: nRF52840-Feather-revD
Bootloader: s140 6.1.1
Date: Feb 22 2019

Note the UF2 bootloader is before version 0.4.0 which is the minimum version required to use the .uf2 files to install CircuitPython. So let’s update it.

Updating the Bootloader

Please note that this step is not required if the bootloader is 0.4.0 or more recent! (see above)

Find the latest bootloader .zip release here and download for the latest version, specifically a file named: circuitplayground_nrf52840_bootloader-0.8.2_s140_6.1.1.zip (or the latest version).

To flash this to the device use adafruit-nrfutil. You can install this via pip3 install --user adafruit-nrfutil.

From there, you can update the firmware with the updated bootloader:

adafruit-nrfutil --verbose dfu serial --package /home/pi/Downloads/circuitplayground_nrf52840_bootloader-0.8.3_s140_6.1.1.zip \
  -p /dev/ttyACM0 -b 115200 --singlebank --touch 1200

Touched serial port /dev/ttyACM0
Opened serial port /dev/ttyACM0
Starting DFU upgrade of type 3, SoftDevice size: 151016, bootloader size: 39000, application size: 0
Sending DFU start packet
Sending DFU init packet
Sending firmware file
########################################
Activating new firmware

DFU upgrade took 20.90584897994995s
Device programmed.

The 10 neopixels should show green and the CPLAYBTBOOT volume should be back.

$ cat /media/pi/CPLAYBTBOOT/INFO_UF2.TXT
UF2 Bootloader 0.8.3 lib/nrfx (v2.0.0) lib/tinyusb (0.12.0-145-g9775e7691) lib/uf2 (remotes/origin/configupdate-9-gadbb8c7)

Installing CircuitPython on the Device

Now let’s download the circuitpython UF2 file from the CircuitPython Download Site for BlueFruit.

You can drag OR copy to the volume as shown below:

$ cp adafruit-circuitpython-circuitplayground_bluefruit-en_US-8.2.9.uf2 /media/pi/CPLAYBTBOOT/

All 10 neopixels should go red and the red LED will pulse slightly.

You should now see a CIRCUITPY drive, meaning we have CircuitPython installed! Last thing we need to do it install the python libraries. These live here in circuitpython:

$ ls /media/pi/CIRCUITPY/lib
(no output!)

To install libraries, we’ll use an adafruit tool called circup which operates similar to python’s pip, except for CircuitPython:

$ pip3 install --user circup

Let’s download the list of required libraries from here.

$ circup install -r ~/Downloads/circup_libs_robotics_02_08_24.txt
Found device at /media/pi/CIRCUITPY, running CircuitPython 8.2.9.
Searching for dependencies for: ['adafruit_ble', 'adafruit_bluefruit_connect', 'adafruit_bus_device', 'adafruit_circuitplayground', 'adafruit_crickit', 'adafruit_gizmo', 'adafruit_hid', 'adafruit_lis3dh', 'adafruit_motor', 'adafruit_pixelbuf', 'adafruit_seesaw', 'adafruit_thermistor', 'found device at /media/pi/circuitpy, running circuitpython 8.2.9.', 'neopixel']
WARNING:
	found device at /media/pi/circuitpy, running circuitpython 8.2.9. is not a known CircuitPython library.
WARNING:
	typing-extensions is not a known CircuitPython library.
WARNING:
	typing-extensions is not a known CircuitPython library.
Ready to install: ['adafruit_ble', 'adafruit_bluefruit_connect', 'adafruit_bus_device', 'adafruit_circuitplayground', 'adafruit_crickit', 'adafruit_gizmo', 'adafruit_hid', 'adafruit_il0373', 'adafruit_lis3dh', 'adafruit_motor', 'adafruit_pixelbuf', 'adafruit_seesaw', 'adafruit_ssd1681', 'adafruit_st7789', 'adafruit_thermistor', 'neopixel']

Installed 'adafruit_ble'.
Installed 'adafruit_bluefruit_connect'.
Installed 'adafruit_bus_device'.
Installed 'adafruit_circuitplayground'.
Installed 'adafruit_crickit'.
Installed 'adafruit_gizmo'.
Installed 'adafruit_hid'.
Installed 'adafruit_il0373'.
Installed 'adafruit_lis3dh'.
Installed 'adafruit_motor'.
Installed 'adafruit_pixelbuf'.
Installed 'adafruit_seesaw'.
Installed 'adafruit_ssd1681'.
Installed 'adafruit_st7789'.
Installed 'adafruit_thermistor'.
Installed 'neopixel'.

Now let’s check out that directory:

$ ls /media/pi/CIRCUITPY/lib
adafruit_ble               adafruit_crickit.mpy       adafruit_lis3dh.mpy        adafruit_ssd1681.mpy
adafruit_bluefruit_connect adafruit_gizmo             adafruit_motor             adafruit_st7789.mpy
adafruit_bus_device        adafruit_hid               adafruit_pixelbuf.mpy      adafruit_thermistor.mpy
adafruit_circuitplayground adafruit_il0373.mpy        adafruit_seesaw            neopixel.mpy

Excellent! Our libraries are installed and we’re ready to code. You can follow this flow to install other CircuitPython libraries you may need when adding other components to the robot.