the Arduino esplora is a microcontroller board derived from the Arduino Leonardo. the esplora differs from all preceding arduino boards in that it provides a number of built-in, ready-to-use set of onboard sensors and imu for interaction. it s designed for people who want to get up and running with Arduino without having to learn about electronics first. for a step-by-step introduction to the esplora, check out the getting started with esplora guide.
the esplora has onboard sound and light outputs, and several input sensors and imu, including a joystick, a slider, a temperature sensor, an accelerometer, a microphone, and a light sensor. it also has the potential to expand its capabilities with two tinkerkit input and output connectors, and a socket for a color tft lcd screen.
like the leonardo board, the esplora uses an atmega32u4 avr microcontroller with 16 mhz crystal oscillator and a micro usb connection capable of acting as a usb client device, like a mouse or a keyboard.
in the upper left corner of the board, there is a reset push button, that you can use to restart the board. there are four status LEDs :
on [green] indicates whether the board is receiving power supply
l [yellow] connected directly to the microcontroller, accessible through pin 13
rx and tx [yellow] indicates the data being transmitted or received over the USB communication
the board contains everything needed to support the microcontroller simply connect it to a computer with a USB cable to get started.
the esplora has built-in USB communication it can appear to a connected computer as a mouse or keyboard, in addition to a virtual cdc serial com port.