The FLORA is a small, wearable Arduino-compatible board developed by Limor Fried (Ladyada), Adafruit's founder. This e-textiles board is intended to be a very user-friendly platform to incorporate Arduino functionality into your wearable electronics project.
The FLORA features built-in USB support via the microUSB connector to eliminate the need for an FTDI cable. However, you will need to modify your Arduino IDE to support the FLORA (Setup Guide is linked below the product photo). The FLORA also features USB HID support, so it can act like a mouse or keyboard to attach directly to computers.
The FLORA's power supply is designed to be flexible and easy-to-use. The onboard JST-2 connector is polarity protected and can accept external battery packs from 3.5V to 16V DC. The board does not incorporate a battery charging circuit. This was by design to allow use with many battery types. Make sure to have a means to charge your battery packs available.
The FLORA has onboard power switch connected to 2A power FET for safe and efficient battery on/off control, so you can power quite a bit without burning out your switch. The FLORA has an onboard 3.3v 250mA regulator with a protection diode and USB fuse so that the microcontroller voltage is consistent and can power common 3.3v modules and sensors.
Adafruit spent a lot of time on the power supply because the FLORA power system is specifically designed to allow easy control and power of a large quantity of addressable NeoPixels. Flora can easily drive 50 pixels directly from the onboard power supply, or up to 500 with the pixels externally powered by a separate 5V supply.
The FLORA v3 now features alligator clip friendly edge pads.