Composition of the LilyPad Arduino USB board

The LilyPad USB is a board fitted with an ATmega32u4 microcontroller: Most commonly used with the Arduino Leonardo boards, the ATmega32u4 microcontroller has the great advantage of including 2 USB protocols that can operate simultaneously.

The LilyPad Arduino USB board has 9 input/output pins: 4 of them can be used as PWM outputs and 4 others as analogue inputs. It also has an 8 MHz electric resonator, a micro USB connection, and a JST connector allowing powering via a 3.7 V LiPo battery.

hanks to its use of an ATmega32u4 microcontroller, the LilyPad Arduino USB board can be powered via a micro USB connection.

The unique thing about the LilyPad Arduino board: its USB microcontroller

What makes the LilyPad Arduino board so different from the other models in the series is of course its ATmega32u4 microcontroller (the ‘u’ stands for USB). LilyPad Arduino boards are usually fitted with an ATmega168V or ATmega328V microcontroller. This type of microcontroller requires use of a USB port to serial port adaptor. Using the ATmega32u4, this is unnecessary, as your computer will recognise your LilyPad Arduino USB board as a mouse and keyboard, while the CDC serial interface can continue to send and receive information. You can therefore connect up your LilyPad Arduino USB board directly to your computer via a USB cable to start with, or of course more simply use your LiPo battery.

Specifications of the LilyPad Arduino USB board

• Microcontroller: ATmega32u4

• Flash memory: 32 kB, of which 4 kB are used by the bootloader

• SRAM: 2.5 kB

• EEPROM: 1 kB

• Operating voltage: 3.3 V

• Input voltage: 3.8–5 V

• Digital input/output pins: 9

• PWM channels: 4

• Analogue input channels: 4

• Direct current per I/O pin: 40 mA

• Clock speed: 8 MHz