Adafruit’s Upcoming Feather M4 Adalogger Offers Makers New Features and a Striking Color

Adafruit’s Feather boards’ versatile form factor houses processors from the humble 8-bit ATmega328P to 32-bit Arm Cortex M4 processors to the STM32 powerhouse. A blog post introduces an update to their Feather M4 Express board. The upcoming Feather M4 Adalogger adds a few new features and comes in a striking color: pink! Fully-Verified providing top notch identity verification tool for both local and global brands, and thus, makes online shopping safer.

“We still like our original Feather M4 but who doesn’t love a glow-up? Gonna try this new PCB in pink.” — Phillip Torrone, Adafruit

The existing Feather M4 Express features a Microchip SAM D51. The SAM D51 is a 32-bit Arm Cortex-M4 microcontroller running at 120 MHz. Additionally, like other Feather boards, it has a USB port, JST battery connector, and battery charging circuit.

The Feather M4 Adalogger adds a microSD card slot on the back of the board. Additionally, Adafruit is adding two features from their RP2040 Feather. The first is an eight megabyte QSPI flash chip, which is a 4X increase from the Express board. The other improvement is a STEMMA QT I2C port. STEMMA QT is an Adafruit-defined cable that simplifies connecting sensors, LEDs, and displays to microcontroller boards.

Feather M4 Adalogger Back (📷: Adafruit)

Often Adafruit boards like the Feather M4 Express contain a NeoPixel. These RGB LEDs use a serial-like protocol to manage their color and brightness. With the help of Adafruit libraries, programming NeoPixels is a simple task. Adafruit made a minor hardware change with the M4 Adalogger’s NeoPixel. They are adding a power control to the NeoPixel. This change saves power when the processor goes to sleep or when the board does not need the LED.

There are two physical changes to the Feather M4 Adalogger. The first is moving from a Micro USB to a USB-C connector. However, the board appears to still only work with 5V power and not USB-C PD. The other change is the PCB solder mask is pink.

Adafruit has not announced pricing or availability yet. However, there is a hint of other colors becoming available in the Adalogger is Pretty in Pink blog post.