Arduino Esplora Board

The Esplora has onboard sound and light outputs, and several input sensors, including a joystick, a slider, a temperature sensor, an accelerometer, a microphone, and a light sensor. It also has the potential to expand its capabilities with two Tinkerkit input and output connectors, and a socket for a color TFT LCD screen.

Like the Leonardo board, the Esplora uses an Atmega32U4 AVR microcontroller with 16 MHz crystal oscillator and a micro USB connection capable of acting as a USB client device, like a mouse or a keyboard.

In the upper left corner of the board there is a reset pushbutton, that you can use to restart the board. There are four status LEDS : ON [green] indicates whether the board is receiving power supply L [yellow] connected directly to the microcontroller, accessible through pin 13 RX and TX [yellow] indicates the data being transmitted or received over the USB communication

The board contains everything needed to support the microcontroller; simply connect it to a computer with a USB cable to get started.

The Esplora has built-in USB communication; it can appear to a connected computer as a mouse or keyboard, in addition to a virtual (CDC) serial / COM port. This has other implications for the behavior of the board; these are detailed on the getting started page.

The board includes: Analog joystick with central push-button, 4 push-buttons, Linear pot, mic, light sensor, temp sensor, 3-axis accelerometer, buzzer, RGB LED, 4 TinkerKit (2 In, 2 Out), TFT display connector