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Sources

This wiki draws on the following sources. Project guides, code patterns, and library documentation are adapted from these materials for educational use at Lick-Wilmerding High School.

Adafruit Learning System

All project guides and hardware documentation are from learn.adafruit.com, published by Adafruit Industries under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license. Content has been adapted, reorganized, and supplemented for classroom use.

Getting Started

Lights & LEDs

Sound & Music

Sensors

Displays

Motors & Motion

USB HID & MIDI

Wireless — BLE

Wireless — Wi-Fi & MQTT

Storage, I/O, & Miscellaneous Hardware

Full Projects Referenced

CircuitPython Library API Documentation

Official API references at docs.circuitpython.org, published by Adafruit Industries. Each library reference page in this wiki links directly to the relevant API docs.

Lights: neopixel · dotstar · led-animation · fancyled · pixel-framebuf

Displays: displayio-ssd1306 · ht16k33 · st7789 · ili9341 · display-text · display-shapes · bitmap-font

Environmental sensors: bme280 · bmp280 · sht31d · mcp9808 · sgp40 · ccs811 · scd4x

Motion sensors: lis3dh · adxl34x · mpu6050 · bno055 · apds9960

Light/color sensors: tcs34725 · veml7700 · ltr390 · tsl2591 · as7341

Distance/proximity sensors: hcsr04 · vl53l0x · vl53l1x · vcnl4040

Touch: mpr121 · cap1188

Motors: motor · servokit · motorkit · pca9685 · drv2605

Audio: simpleio · midi · rtttl · vs1053

USB: hid

Wireless — BLE: adafruit-ble · ble-heart-rate · ble-midi

Wireless — Wi-Fi: requests · minimqtt · adafruit-io · ntp

Radio: rfm69 · rfm9x

NFC: pn532

Storage: sdcard · fram

RTC: ds3231 · pcf8523

I/O expansion: mcp230xx · tca9548a · seesaw · mcp3xxx

Utilities: debouncer · bus-device · simpleio · logging · bitmap-font

Community Resources

  • awesome-circuitpython — community-curated list of CircuitPython libraries, tools, and projects, maintained by Adafruit and contributors. Consulted for editor recommendations and community links.
  • Adafruit CircuitPython Bundle — the official library bundle containing all ~300 libraries. The bundle contents informed which libraries were included in this wiki's reference section.
  • Adafruit Forums — community support forum.
  • Adafruit Discord — real-time help from the CircuitPython community.

Tod Kurt

The following resources by Tod Kurt were consulted for the synthio and audio synthesis content in this wiki:

Third-Party APIs Used in Project Examples

These APIs appear in project code examples. They are not affiliated with Adafruit or this wiki.

API Used in
Open-Meteo Weather lamp, weather station
OpenWeatherMap Weather station (alternate)
Open Notify — Astronauts in Space PyPortal dashboard
ESPN Scoreboard API (site.api.espn.com/apis/site/v2/sports/{sport}/{league}/scoreboard) Soccer scoreboard
NASA APOD API PyPortal dashboard
Adafruit IO Plant monitor, weather lamp, MQTT projects
Home Assistant MQTT home automation project

Hardware References

  • DRV2605L Datasheet — Texas Instruments haptic driver IC, referenced in the DRV2605 motor guide.
  • RTTTL Format Reference — specification for the Ring Tone Text Transfer Language used in the adafruit_rtttl library.

Code Editors Referenced

  • Mu Editor — beginner-friendly editor with built-in serial console
  • Thonny — Python IDE suitable for CircuitPython
  • code.circuitpython.org — browser-based editor, no install required

This wiki is produced for academic use at Lick-Wilmerding High School, Department of Technical Arts. It is not a commercial product and makes no claim of original authorship over hardware descriptions, API documentation, or project ideas derived from the sources above.