Connect the Circuit Playground Express - Python Tutorial

- [Instructor] Before we get started, we have to make sure our Circuit Playground Express is set up properly for CircuitPython. First, we'll update the Bootloader. The Bootloader's a small program that's responsible for loading other programs like the CircuitPython Interpreter. The Bootloader supports UF2 format files and is also compatible with Arduino, another way to program the Circuit Playground Express. The second piece is the CircuitPython Interpreter. The Interpreter is responsible for running your CircuitPython programs. The Bootloader, Interpreter, and your programs stay even if you remove power. The Bootloader and Interpreter are specific to each board and can both be downloaded from the main CircuitPython website. Let's go to the desktop and see how to prepare our Circuit Playground Express. The first thing I'll do is open up a browser and go to the main CircuitPython website, circuitpython.org, and you can see that there are a number of different links to different resources, getting started, and this awesome link has a bunch of awesome resources about CircuitPython. We're interested in downloads, so I'm going to click on that. And this has downloads for every board supported by CircuitPython. We're interested in the Circuit Playground Express so I'll click on that. And you'll always see the current version of CircuitPython right here, and so we're going to download that. Go to, so it's a UF2 file, and then all the way at the bottom is the Bootloader, so we're also going to download that. So that's all we need. Close the browser. The next thing I'm going to do is connect the Circuit Playground Express board to the USB port. (electronic buzzing) When you do that, if it's a fresh board and hasn't been programmed before, it'll run a factory demo. You could hear the startup sound and then the lights going around in a rainbow. In order to update the board, you need to first put it into Bootloader mode and to do that, you need to press the reset button, which is right in the center of the board, so I'll just do that now. And you can see the LEDs turn red and then green. That means you've been successful, and the board is ready to be updated. And it shows up as a CPLAYBOOT drive, so first of all, we're going to update the Bootloader. Just drag that onto the drive. You'll see some flashing lights or at least one flashing LED. And when it's complete, the green LEDs will come back on. It's still in Bootloader mode. So the next thing we want to do is install CircuitPython, the Interpreter, so we drag that onto the CPLAYBOOT drive. Again, some flashing. And then it comes back as a CIRCUITPY drive. So that means that it's ready for CircuitPython. Now, if your drive shows up like this to begin with, if it already has a version of CircuitPython on it, then you need to double click the reset button rather than single click, so keep that in mind. And that's all you need to do to update your board. You don't have to do this very often, especially with the Bootloader, but it's good to keep track of the current versions of CircuitPython and update your board when appropriate.