Feather is the new development board from Adafruit, and like its namesake it is thin, light, and lets you fly! Adafruit designed Feather to be a new standard for portable microcontroller cores.
This is the Adafruit Feather 32u4 FONA - their take on an 'all-in-one' Arduino-compatible + audio/sms/data capable cellular with built in USB and battery charging. Its an Adafruit Feather 32u4 with a FONA800 module, ready to rock! We have other boards and accessories in the Feather family, check'em out here.
At the Feather 32u4's heart is at ATmega32u4 clocked at 8 MHz and at 3.3V logic, a chip setup we've had tons of experience with as it's the same as the Flora. This chip has 32K of flash and 2K of RAM, with built in USB so not only does it have a USB-to-Serial program & debug capability built in with no need for an FTDI-like chip, it can also act like a mouse, keyboard, USB MIDI device, etc.
Since you'll be taking this on the road, Adafruit added a connector for any of their 3.7V Lithium polymer batteries and built in battery charging. A 500mAh+ Lipoly battery is required for use, it keeps the cellular module happy during the high current spikes. Plug the Feather into microUSB to charge at 500mA.
Here's some handy specs! Like all Feather 32u4's you get:
Measures 2.4" x 0.9" x 0.28" (61mm x 23mm x 7mm) without headers soldered in
Light as a (large?) feather - 8.2 grams
ATmega32u4 @ 8MHz with 3.3V logic/power
3.3V regulator with 500mA peak current output
USB native support, comes with USB bootloader and serial port debugging
You also get tons of pins - 20 GPIO pins
Hardware Serial, hardware I2C, hardware SPI support
8 x PWM pins
10 x analog inputs
Built in 500mA lipoly charger with charging status indicator LED
Pin #13 red LED for general purpose blinking
Power/enable pin for the 3.3V regulator
4 mounting holes
Reset button
Connect your Feather to the Internet or make phone calls with our trusted-and-tested FONA module. At the heart is a GSM cellular module (we use the latest SIM800) the size of a postage stamp. This module can do just about everything.
Quad-band 850/900/1800/1900MHz - connect onto any global GSM network with any 2G SIM (in the USA, T-Mobile is suggested)
Make and receive voice calls using an external 8? speaker + electret microphone
Send and receive SMS messages
Send and receive GPRS data (TCP/IP, HTTP, etc.)
Scan and receive FM radio broadcasts (yeah, we don't exactly know why this was included but it works really well)
AT command interface with "auto baud" detection
Pair-able Bluetooth client interface with SPP (for controlling the module) as well as audio.
You will also need some required accessories to make Feather FONA work. These are not included!
SIM Card! - A 2G Mini SIM card is required to do anything on the cellular network.
Lipoly Battery - 500mAh or larger!
MicroUSB cable for charging the battery.
External Antenna - We like this slim sticker-type, which plugs right in. Alternatively, this straight SMA one or this right-angle SMA one will work but you'll also need a uFL to SMA adapter cable so you can connect to your SMA antenna
External Mic & Speaker - If you want to make phone calls, you'll also need this electret mic and mini 8 ohm speaker
Check out Adafruit's tutorials for all sorts of details, including schematics, files, IDE instructions, power management and more!
