Adafruit's Sparkle Motion Stick Aims to Make Battery-Powered WLED Projects a Cinch
USB stick form factor delivers a compact and convenient way of driving your WLED projects — or for anything else compatible with an ESP32.
Adafruit has launched a new gadget that makes it easier to drive addressable LED projects from USB battery packs: the Sparkle Motion Stick.
"The Adafruit Sparkle Motion Stick is part of our series of 'Sparkle Motion' boards, which are our attempt to make the best small WLED-friendly smart LED driving board in the whole world," Adafruit explains of the new device. "Our resident mermaid, firepixie [Erin St Blaine], makes a lot of projects with WLED, and she loves it! So, how can we make something powerful enough to drive advanced LED projects that need a compact design?"
The answer" by making it in the form factor of a USB stick. One end of the board features a USB Type-A connector, while the other end has a screw terminal block for 5VDC, ground, and two data pins — and there's a push-button input, programmed as an on/off switcher in the stock firmware. Less visible unless you're looking closely are an infrared receiver for remote control, an I2S microphone for audio-reactive lighting control, and a small NeoPixel RGB LED along with a single-color red LED status light.
Building on the company's earlier, and larger, Sparkle Motion, the Stick variant is somewhat more limited: it's based on a classic Espressif ESP32 microcontroller, giving it Bluetooth and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and Wi-Fi connectivity, but only supports 5V operation and has fewer outputs. On the flip-side, it's considerably smaller and is designed for easy integration into portable projects: everything can be powered by just plugging the USB Type-A connector into a USB battery bank or power supply, so long as you're not planning on drawing more than 2A for your lights.
"While we recommend it for use with WLED [firmware]," Adafruit notes, "it will also work just fine as a compact ESP32 board for use with Arduino, ESP-IDF, MicroPython, CircuitPython, or any other ESP32-supported codebase."
The Adafruit Sparkle Motion Stick is available on the Adafruit store for $17.95 or $19.95 with plastic enclosure, both before volume discounts.