To add more fun to CL-32, you can pop in Add-on cards into the expansion port.
Add On Specification
The card design is standard. It is based on an M.2 E key connection. It can be no wider than 22mm and no longer than 35mm to keep it within the bounds of the device. The card can be longer if needed, but that will make the device less pocket friendly (although that can be useful for antenna connections etc). The latching mechanism is still a work in progress, but it is planned to be simple and tool free
Want to make your own??
The final design of the board is not yet finalized, but things should be pretty close now. You can download a blank project here and have try yourself!!
The board was made in KiCad 8, but should be importable to other systems. I cant provide any technical help making the boards, so you are on your own 😊
The original plan for the Add-on cards was to be a platform for learning. Each card could come with a pack of exercises to learn programming based on the card
Here are some of the ideas so far, more info will be added as they are
LED Card
This card has a matrix of 36 LED’s connected in a grid to 12 of the i/0 pins. By cycling the i/o pins and toggling them high or low, you can control each LED individually
LoRa Card
This is a work in progress, but it is a simple LoRa module which can either use the antenna on the case back PCB, or an external antenna. This allows CL-32 to talk to other devices over a low power long range radio system. This could also make CL-32 become a mobile communicator using a mesh based system such as Meshtastic
Using a Seeed studio Wio-SX1262 module, and power control built in too, so the module can be disabled to save power
To be continued….