That‘s so informative and useful! We will take all your opinion into consideration and accelerate the product development process.
Thank you for your kind offer, and we will be glad to contact you when a beta-tester is needed. You are such a warmhearted participant in our product design process, and we are also looking for rangers, if you are interested, detailed could be found in:
Thanks again for the valuable inputs~
I have revised the design based on users’ opinions collected. Octagon and Credit Card version have been added. May have a look and choose your preferred one. Also welcome to share your thoughts on further design.
I am not a big fan of the hexagonal board I, as its shape makes it difficult to use in a standard context.
One of the unique feature of the Xiao is its compactness. So I would prefer III over II. Now, the micro-SD card slot and the battery cell holder could be easily added on the rear side of the board.
On the III proposal, are the Grove connectors vertical or horizontal?
All those new options do not discard the minimalistic initial E option.
The only reason I am hesitate with E version is the lack of Grove interface and GPIOs ledout, which we deem important more application possibilities and debug scenario. And this is the most important reason that I consider a hexagonal shape, since it has enough side boundary to accommodate those connectors need to be put toward outsides. Compare to a 6565mm square, do you think a 6565mm hexagonal would be also fine to assembly?
Put the micro-SD card slot and the battery cell holder on the backside will definitely save a lot of space, but would also cause difficulty in using and assembling the board to a flat surface. What do you think?
I might have misunderstood model E. For me, it shows 3 Grove connectors.
Back to my initial post, I see two use cases.
1. Development expansion board
The aim is to facilitate development with the SWD plug for debugging, all pins exposed and 3 or 4 Grove connectors for external devices.
2. Expansion board
The goal is to provide a set of must-have peripherals like extra Flash, microSD-card slot, battery for RTC, screen, battery manager, RGB LED, all pins exposed and obviously plenty of Grove connectors.
This second use case could be expanded with a set of climate sensors (temperature, humidity, pressure, air quality, light, UV, sound, …) through one single I²C bus.
I would prefer a square board rather than an hexagonal one. Another criteria is the final price, which needs to be consistent with the affordable Xiao.
“Are the Grove connectors vertical or horizontal?”
For easy plug for testing and debugging scenario, Grove connectors are all vertical. And horizontal connectors will take more space also. So which one you prefer?
For the III project, I would prefer horizontal Grove connectors to ensure a good reading of the screen.
I see. Thanks for bringing out this important issue.
I have made a test just now. While connecting the cables to the vertical Grove interface on both side of the screen, the screen will be also read without sight block. For not making the board any bigger, it seems to have the vertical Grove would be a better choice.
I like the idea of expansion boards but I don’t think I would go too big. For me the reason I picked the Xiao was because it was super small. I would probably pick another board if I was doing a more complex project. In addition, the small amount of flash memory on the Xiao makes it really hard to do complicated projects as you quickly run out of memory for library files (in my project I could only just get the HID library on it - didn’t even have room for the neopixel library).
I would take a look at all the connectors you’ve added and then see if you can actually have room to include all of the libraries on the Xiao. If not, thats probably a good sign that you need to reduce the amount of functionality it has.
PS… if you released a Xiao+ with more memory it would be my go to dev board for SO MANY of my projects that I currently use adafruit products for.
Thank you for detailed input.
Yes, the memory issue has been seriously considered in the design. You could see in the first picture there is an on-board SPI-FLASH. And there is a TF card holder as well, enables to add extend tf card for more memory.
Actually, even on the latest released basic expansion board for Seeeduino XIAO, there is a bonding pad reserved for extend SPI-FLASH. May have a look at:
@reivilo @hellweaver666 @salman
Hi everybody, thanks for the detailed inputs. Just want to update the new version design of Premier Shield for Seeeduino XIAO as below:
And we have made some special designs for the silk print. Please let us know how would you like them.
If I’m honest, I don’t really like the special designs. I would be perfectly content with black.
I wanted to check, the i2c port, is that compatible with the Adafruit Stemma/Sparkfun qwiic standard for i2c boards? Would I be able to put circuitpython code on the SD card? RESET BUTTON! YESS!
Happy to test one if you want to send it to me 
Hi, Hellweaver. Thank you for your quick reply. What a pity you don’t like the colorful design.
For your question, as long as the signal pin sequence is the same, IIC port on the board will be compatible with the Adafruit Stemma/Sparkfun qwiic module. However, even you could plug it in Grove interface, these two interfaces are not the exactly the same on their shape, we do not recommend to do so for avoiding unexpectable damage of the connector.
P.S.: Grove - Qwiic Hub could allow you to either use Qwiic/STEMMA QT modules on Grove controller or use Grove modules on Qwiic/STEMMA QT controller. Please refer to:
The card slot is designed for expanding memory, so yes you could put circuit python code on it as well as other libraries you need, which makes more possibilities for Seeeduino XIAO.
We currently released a Seeed Ranger Program. Seeed Ranger could apply for free Seeed Products for project use from time to time. Should you be interested in this program, please visit:
I am not a big fan of the special designs. It may appeal for a limited batch, but since the expansion board is touted as “premier” or “professional”, black is better.
I have mixed feelings about the new design. It tries to merge the two scenarios I’ve mentioned earlier, a Development expansion board and an Expansion board.
1. Development expansion board
I strongly recommend using a SWD connector instead of the 0.1" pins of the last iteration. The SWD connector is fool-proof and standard debuggers like the Segger Edu mini comes with the right cable to plug and play.
I would prefer design E or C.
2. Expansion board
As an expansion board, the last iteration lacks a second I²C Grove connector. As I²C is very popular for connecting Grove sensors and devices, I would expect a second I²C connector. I would prefer design A or design II or III.
Other comments
A).Conclusion
III with a screen or design C without. Both bring a large number of Grove connectors within a constrained size, and could answer the two scenarios I’ve exposed earlier.Seeed Ranger Program
I’ve applied to the Seeed Ranger Program and I’m awaiting the answer.
Choosing the hardware wasn’t easy as I’ve already ordered most of it, including boards and peripherals.
I like the classical type, but if I hada to make a choice, I’d choose either the “chocolate” or the lower right pink version. I love the OLED display, my Xiao for Grove doesn’t have it!
The reason why there are fewer Grove connectors in the latest version is that we are trying to avoid confusion caused by the reuse of GPIOs.
SeeeduinoXIAO has led out 14 GPIOs including 3.3V/5V and GND. Other 11 GPIOs will be used as:
The add-on SD card would be able to expand memory for Python and the library, just as the same function of SPI-flash and larger memory space.
SAMD21 MCU already include an RTC but Seeeduino XIAO did not lead out the required pin for it, so it may be more practical to just add another RTC chip on board.
For the more number of Grove IIC you are expected, we didn’t put two of it only because of the space concern, and Grove IIC Hub would be able to fix the problem if more IIC devices are needed, so we keep only one on board.
Glad to hear that. My suggestion is that you could have a look at our newest released products to see what new projects you could build. No need to force yourself to apply anything you do not really need or you already have. Our review will be flexible to some extend, so just illustrate what you are going to build, components you are going to use, indicate what you already have so you do not need to apply for it. If your project is selected, we may also offer a coupon for your future purchase. Looking forward to your project:)
Don’t worry, we will take all users’ inputs into serious consideration. And that’s why we put the design here to ask for more opinions.
Though I spend some time on the design of new style silk print, so far it seems classical type is more popular in the forum.
Glad to know that you like the OLED.
@ming.wen Thank you for the detailed explanations.
Maybe a revision of the Xiao board could add the missing connection.
So I vote for the following finalists:
III with a screenC without a screenI found that too many Grove is not friendly enough as it will cause confusions for users when many GPIOs being reused. For this reason, I have to some extend abandoned the previous design that have eight Groves.
According to your last reply, I modify the design as folow. May also have a look:
