M5 Cardputer ADV

The board as it appears on the Velxio canvas, with its full pin map read live from the simulator (regenerated by scripts/gen-boards.mjs, so it always matches what you can wire).

Family: Pro boards · Languages: Arduino C++, MicroPython, ESP-IDF

What is emulated

The Cardputer ADV is self-contained: every peripheral lives on the board itself, so its projects need no wiring at all — you place the board and press Run.

Peripheral	In the emulator
1.14” ST7789 LCD, 240x135	Rendered live on the board art; drive it with M5Cardputer.Display (M5GFX)
56-key keyboard (TCA8418)	Click the keycaps, or click the board once and type on your own keyboard
Speaker (ES8311 codec, I2S)	Plays through your computer’s audio — the exact samples the firmware writes
Microphone (I2S RX)	Real sample stream — see the live level meter in the hardware tour
microSD	A real FAT image holding the project’s own files; load yours from the SD Card panel
BMI270 IMU + battery gauge	Tilt the board and set the charge from the Sensors popover in the canvas header
RGB LED	Rendered on the board
IR transmitter (G44)	Sends NEC frames; the board flashes the decoded address and command

The board runs on the free plan, in all three ESP32 languages (Arduino C++, MicroPython, ESP-IDF).

Run your first example

The gallery ships thirteen ready-to-run Cardputer ADV projects. Start with LCD + keyboard echo — it does the two things almost every Cardputer project builds on: draw on the LCD and read the keyboard.

1. Open it

Go straight to velxio.dev/example/cardputer-adv-hello, or browse the examples gallery and type cardputer in the search box:

2. Look around the editor

The project loads with the sketch on the left and the board on the canvas. There is nothing to wire — the board is the whole circuit. The example also brings its libraries with it: the Workspace tree on the left shows sketch.ino next to a libraries.json holding the three the sketch needs (M5Cardputer, M5Unified and M5GFX), so the first build already has them.

3. Press Run

Velxio compiles the sketch with the real ESP32-S3 Arduino toolchain in the cloud (the Output console streams the compiler), then boots the firmware on the emulated board. The first build of a session takes the longest; after that, builds come from cache. When it boots, the LCD draws the title and the Type: prompt:

4. Type on the keyboard

Click the board once so it owns keyboard focus, then type on your real keyboard — or click the individual keycaps on the board art. Every key you press appears on the LCD; Backspace deletes the last character and Enter clears the line. The emulated TCA8418 controller reports up to three simultaneous keys, exactly as the hardware does.

That is the whole loop. From here, edit the sketch and press Run again — the first project tutorial covers the editor workflow in more depth.

How the sketch works

The complete example is about forty lines:

// M5Cardputer ADV — built-in LCD + keyboard (M5Cardputer library)
#include <M5Cardputer.h>

String line;

void setup() {
  auto cfg = M5.config();
  M5Cardputer.begin(cfg, true);   // true = init the keyboard
  M5Cardputer.Display.setRotation(1);          // landscape 240x135
  M5Cardputer.Display.fillScreen(BLACK);
  M5Cardputer.Display.setTextColor(GREEN, BLACK);
  M5Cardputer.Display.setTextSize(2);
  M5Cardputer.Display.setCursor(6, 6);
  M5Cardputer.Display.print("Cardputer ADV");
  M5Cardputer.Display.setTextColor(WHITE, BLACK);
  M5Cardputer.Display.setCursor(6, 34);
  M5Cardputer.Display.print("Type:");
}

void loop() {
  M5Cardputer.update();
  if (M5Cardputer.Keyboard.isChange() && M5Cardputer.Keyboard.isPressed()) {
    Keyboard_Class::KeysState st = M5Cardputer.Keyboard.keysState();
    for (auto c : st.word) line += c;
    if (st.del && line.length()) line.remove(line.length() - 1);
    if (st.enter) line = "";
    M5Cardputer.Display.fillRect(6, 60, 228, 40, BLACK);
    M5Cardputer.Display.setCursor(6, 66);
    M5Cardputer.Display.setTextColor(CYAN, BLACK);
    M5Cardputer.Display.print(line);
  }
  delay(5);
}

Piece by piece:

• M5Cardputer.begin(cfg, true) brings up the board; the second argument initialises the keyboard controller. Every Cardputer sketch starts this way.
• M5Cardputer.Display is a full M5GFX surface. setRotation(1) turns the panel landscape (240x135); setCursor / setTextColor / print work like every Adafruit-GFX-style API. The second color argument to setTextColor is the background, which lets text overwrite itself without flicker.
• M5Cardputer.update() at the top of loop() polls the keyboard — without it, Keyboard never changes.
• keysState() returns everything held right now: st.word is the printable characters, st.del and st.enter flag Backspace and Enter. The sketch appends, trims or clears line accordingly.
• The fillRect + print pair is the simplest redraw: blank the text area, then print the new line. For flicker-free full-screen drawing, the gallery’s text terminal shows the next step — an off-screen M5Canvas sprite pushed in one go.

All Cardputer examples in the gallery

Ten of the thirteen are M5Stack’s official examples, unmodified — they double as a conformance check for the emulation. In rough learning order:

Example	What it shows
LCD + keyboard echo	The starter above — display plus keyboard in 40 lines
Button (official)	The G0 button, with a beep on press and release
Single key press (official)	Watch one key via isKeyPressed('a')
Multi key press (official)	Up to three simultaneous keys from the TCA8418
Display test (official)	The LCD path at full tilt — random shapes and text forever
Buzzer (official)	I2S speaker tones you can hear through your own audio
Text input (official)	Line editing with modifiers and an off-screen canvas
Text terminal (official)	Scrolling sprite log with a vector font — the end-to-end LCD + keyboard check
microSD (official)	Mount, list, create, rename, delete, throughput — on a FAT image you control
IR NEC send (official)	NEC frames out of the G44 IR diode, visualised on the board
REPL guessing game (official)	A three-file project: console, prompt and command loop
Hardware tour	Six diagnostic pages — keys, microSD, IMU tilt bubble, RGB LED, battery, mic meter
Brick Blaster	A complete game: sprite rendering, keyboard steering, pentatonic sound

Start your own project

Two ways to begin a Cardputer project of your own:

• New workspace in the toolbar, then pick the M5 Cardputer ADV starter — it loads the LCD + keyboard echo example above as your starting point.
• Or Add Component and search for Cardputer to place the board on any canvas yourself, then add M5Cardputer from the library manager.

Save with the toolbar’s Save button and the project — code, board and the microSD contents — lands in your projects.

Pins (13)

• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 13
• 14
• 15
• 39
• 40
• 5V
• GND
• 2
• 1

Every pin above is clickable on the canvas — click one to start a wire. Board-level behavior, quirks and example links live on the family page.