Adafruit Clue: An affordable Arduino-alternative that comes with an IPS display and several sensors

The Adafruit Clue, which is already on backorder, is an Arduino-alternative with a difference. Adafruit has integrated an IPS panel, which operates at a resolution of 240 x 240 pixels. The 1.3-inch colour panel can operate on 3-6 V, with the board itself regulating its voltage. The manufacturer has integrated protective diodes too, for reference.

At the heart of the board is a Nordic nRF52840 Bluetooth LE processor, which is complemented by 2 MB of flash storage and 254 KB of RAM. The chipset's ARM Cortex M4 processor clocks at 64 MHz, too.

Adafruit has also integrated several sensors, including a 9-axis motion sensor, along with an accelerometer or gyroscope, and a digital magnetometer. Additionally, there is an APDS9960 sensor that can detect light, colours, proximity and movement. The Clue includes PDM microphone, SHT humidity and BMP280 sensors too, the latter of which can measure temperature and barometric pressure.

Furthermore, an LED indicator can display RGB colours, while there are also onboard speakers. There are two bright white LEDs too, along with a Qwiic/STEMMA QT connector for connecting additional sensors and actuators. According to the manufacturer, the Clue supports Grove I2C sensors, which can be connected via an adapter cable.

The Clue can be programmed using Arduino IDE or CircuitPython. MakeCode or Scratch are not supported though, for example. Adafruit is currently offering the Clue for US$29.95, but it is out of the stock at the time of writing. The company will let people know when the board is available to purchase again, though.