No! Swan is a standalone Feather-compatible MCU that can be used with FeatherWings, other Feather-based projects, and/or independently from the Notecard and Notecarriers.
Once you receive your Swan, you can follow the guides at dev.blues.io to get started.
No, but we recommend getting one! Swan can be programmed over USB for both Arduino and CircuitPython use, but a programmer is required for using IAR or STM32CubeIDE. If you’re interested in step-debugging in VSCode, IAR, or STM32CubeIDE, an STLINK programmer is required, and we have an inexpensive option in the store.
The Swan embedded board is a single-sided PCB that includes a set of castellations to bring 55 I/O, power and ground pins from the STM32L4 on the board out to the edge. To access these pins, you can solder the Swan embedded to the Swan carrier board, or design your own PCB that leverages these pins.
The Swan Feather Kit, which includes the Notecarrier-AF, a Notecard, and Swan Feather is currently available for pre-order. We expect to begin delivering pre-orders on a first-come-first-served basis in late Oct 2021.
The Swan Datasheet is available at dev.blues.io.
Yes! If you’re interested in doing Edge ML or tinyML with Swan, you’ll find that its 120 MHz clock speed, 2MB of Flash and 640KB of RAM make it a great board for on-device inferencing. To learn more, check out our guide on using Swan with Edge Impulse.
