Adafruit
Adafruit Slider Trinkey - USB NeoPixel Slide Potentiometer
The Adafruit Slider Trinkey is a tiny USB A board built around the ATSAMD21 microcontroller with a pre-soldered 35 mm slide potentiometer and two NeoPixel LE...
The Adafruit Slider Trinkey is a tiny USB A board built around the ATSAMD21 microcontroller with a pre-soldered 35 mm slide potentiometer and two NeoPixel LEDs. Plug it into any USB A port on your computer and program it as a volume control, brightness adjuster, colour picker, or any custom slider input device.
The board supports CircuitPython and Arduino, and over USB it can appear as a serial console, MIDI device, or HID keyboard/mouse — making it incredibly versatile for custom input projects. A capacitive touch pad and reset button round out the feature set.
Key Features
- ATSAMD21E18 Processor – 48 MHz Cortex M0+ with 256 KB flash and 32 KB RAM
- USB A Plug – Plugs directly into any computer's USB A port, no cable needed
- 35 mm Slide Potentiometer – 10 kΩ analog input, pre-soldered and ready to use
- 2× NeoPixel LEDs – Reverse-mount RGB LEDs for colour feedback
- Capacitive Touch Pad – One additional touch input
- Native USB – Serial, MIDI, and HID (keyboard/mouse) support
- CircuitPython & Arduino – Full support with existing NeoPixel and FreeTouch libraries
Ideal For
- Custom volume and brightness controls
- Colour pickers and parameter adjusters
- MIDI faders and music production tools
- Macro input devices and productivity controls
Package Contents
- 1× Adafruit Slider Trinkey (with pre-soldered slide potentiometer)
Jargon buster
Plain-language definitions for the technical terms used above.
- CircuitPython
- A beginner-friendly version of Python designed to run directly on microcontroller boards. If a product supports CircuitPython, you can often program it by copying code files onto the board rather than setting up a more complex toolchain.
- HID
- Human Interface Device is a USB device class used for keyboards, mice, gamepads and similar controls. If a board supports HID over USB, it can act like an input device to a computer without needing a custom driver.
- microcontroller
- A microcontroller is a small computer on a chip that runs your program and controls connected inputs and outputs. For this product, it is the part that reads buttons and sensors, drives the display and speaker, and communicates over Bluetooth.
- MIDI
- MIDI is a standard way for electronic instruments, controllers, and software to send musical control messages such as notes, velocity, and timing. If a board supports MIDI, it can be triggered from keyboards, drum pads, sequencers, or other music gear rather than only from buttons or code.
- native USB
- Native USB means the microcontroller itself handles USB communication, rather than using a separate USB-to-serial chip. This matters for programming, debugging, and projects that need the board to act directly as a USB device.
- NeoPixel
- A type of addressable LED system where colour data is sent along a single digital data line from one LED or controller to the next. Compatibility matters because the timing and signal format must match for the lights or driver board to respond correctly.
- potentiometer
- A variable resistor usually turned with a knob or shaft to create an adjustable electrical signal. It is often used for inputs such as volume, brightness or position, so it helps beginners learn how a microcontroller reads changing values.
- RAM
- RAM is temporary memory used while a device is running, and its contents are lost when power is removed. A “Run in RAM” mode is useful for testing settings without permanently programming the module, but it may not support every feature.
- RGB
- Short for red, green and blue, usually referring to an LED that can mix those three colours. It matters because controlling an RGB LED teaches how separate outputs combine to create different colours.
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Related Tutorials
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