Adafruit MONSTER M4SK

The Adafruit MONSTER M4SK is a fun microcontroller platform for building costumes or decorations. The first thing you will notice is that the shape of the PCB is that of cat-eye glasses, only instead of the lenses there are two 240x240 TFT screens. The default program on the board places animated eyes on these two screens and makes them look in random directions. The screen printing on the board continues the cat motif, with a small capacitive touch sensor nose on the deck. Touch the nose and the eyes meet. Right out of the box, one can imagine using them as is in a Halloween-themed application.

Looking back at the back of the table, we find a lot more than expected. The displays are driven by an Atmel Cortex M4-based microcontroller clocked at 120 MHz. The microcontroller has 8 MB of QSPI flash memory ready for graphics storage. There are a few sensors in addition to the touch sensor on the front, including a three-axis accelerometer on the right "lens" of the PCB. On the left we find a light sensor that faces the front through a hole in the PCB. Along the top edge are three tactile switches. Additionally, there is an on/off switch and a reset switch. Programming is done via a micro-B USB port.

Looking along the edge of the card, we find a number of expansion ports. First, a headphone jack and a 2-pin speaker connector. A small class-D amplifier on the board can drive headphones or a 1 watt, 8 ohm speaker. On the side edges of the board are JST connectors. The four-pin port connects to the I2C bus on the microcontroller. The two three-pin ports connect to digital I/O pins, capable of PWM output and analog input. All these ports are STEMMA (not STEMMA QT) and Grove compatible. There's a two-pin battery connector for a LiPoly battery, with the integrated charge controller allowing you to charge via power to the USB port. On the bottom edge is a smaller connector for a PDM microphone.

There are two nine-pin connectors on the back of the card, one on each lens and facing each other on the bridge. Small perforations between each lens and the bridge allow the user to separate the two halves so they can be placed farther apart. The two lenses are then connected to each other with a 9...