Give your ItsyBitsy project a boost with the Adafruit AirLift Bitsy Add-On - a daughter board that allows you to use the powerful ESP32 as a WiFi co-processor. You probably have your favorite ItsyBitsy (like the Itsy' M4) which comes with its own devices and many libraries. But he doesn't have built-in WiFi! So let's give this chip a best friend, the ESP32. This chip can handle all the heavy tasks associated with connecting to a WiFi network and transferring data from a site, even if it uses the latest TLS/SSL encryption (root certificates are pre-engraved in advance).

Having WiFi managed by a separate chip means that your code is simpler, you don't need to cache socket data, or compile and debug an SSL library. Send basic but powerful commands based on 8MHz SPI sockets for high-speed data transfer.

You can use any ItsyBitsy with 3V logic (this means that ItsyBitsy 32u4 5V will not work), although the'32u4 Itsy will not be able to perform very complex tasks or store a lot of data. It also works very well with CircuitPython, a SAMD51/Cortex M4 minimum required since we need a RAM package. All you need is an SPI bus and 2 control pins plus a 3V power supply that can provide up to 250mA during WiFi use.

We have placed an ESP32 module on a Bitsy card with a three-state chip for MISO so that you can share the SPI bus with other devices. Delivered fully assembled and tested, pre-programmed with the firmware of the ESP32 SPI WiFi co-processor that you can use in CircuitPython to use in the WiFi co-processor on SPI + 2 pins. We also add headers so you can weld them on to Itsy for a compact sandwich, but you can also take a set of stacking headers to stack them above/below your ItsyBitsy (use Feather stacking headers and reduce them to the desired size).

We have tested it with all our ItsyBitsy and it should work very well with them except with ItsyBitsy 32u4 5V (because the voltage is not correct). For use in the Arduino, ItsyBitsy'32u4 3V can do basic connectivity and data transfer but they don't have much RAM so we don't recommend them - use M0, M4 or similar, for best results! For using CircuitPython, an ItsyBitsy M4 is required - the M0 series does not have enough RAM in CircuitPython.

The embedded firmware is a slight variant of the Arduino WiFiNINA kernel, which works perfectly! For the moment, the connection to Enterprise WiFi is not yet supported.

Consult our learning system guide for schematics, files and to start AirLift'in' in a few minutes!

Technical details

Product dimensions : 35.6 mm x 18.0 mm x 5.5 mm / 1.4 in x 0.7 in x 0.2 in

Product Weight: 6.0g / 0.2oz