Comments on: Arduino Nano updated

By: roger

roger — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 06:48:26 +0000

I appreciate dropping a Nano into a more complex PCB, abstracting away the uC to an open standard, easily swapping out uC “modules”, accessibility to a wide range of programmers, and one less thing to document and support!
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It can help a proprietary PCB become less proprietary and more open.
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A pick though. They missed providing a nice Eagle library for its footprint (Eagle libs for the Nano can be found elsewhere).

By: therian

therian — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 03:03:50 +0000

hey arduino fans you will newer get ride of those tiny training wheals, newer

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:09:53 +0000

They could have been working on the 3.0 board purely for cost reduction well before they decided to put the 328 chip in them. The two changes didn’t have to happen at the same time. The two chips are pin compatible after all. Perhaps they decided to go both at the same time for simplicity of sale, or to make an even stronger reason to buy it. I get twice the memory now for 15 dollars less?!? Sold!

By: Joe

Joe — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:28:50 +0000

The board claearly says V3.0. Also, the schematic at the website to pre order them has the V3.0 schematic with the 168 on it. What gives? All the pics at both site have the 168 chip.

By: 24601

24601 — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:21:05 +0000

@jamieriddles

isn’t that just an old pic of the old 4-layer nano?

By: jamieriddles

jamieriddles — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:35:06 +0000

@novice

haha your right, if you go look at the full size pic on the arduino website, the chip clearly says 168 instead of 328

By: Taylor

Taylor — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:25:32 +0000

Eh, $35 isn’t too bad, but you can still get the bare chips for $3 so I really don’t see the point. Sure, it’s easier, but c’mon, learning to do it the “real” way isn’t that much harder, and don’t we all want to get more skills?

I really suggest everyone look up how to program an AVR by itself. At its simplest you can borrow a friend’s programmer if avaliable, load a bootloader on it (also easy, just look it up) and then from then on you can load code via serial. It’s really not hard to start programming AVRs on the cheap. Also check out Sparkfun.com, they have some good tutorials.
-Taylor

By: lekernel

lekernel — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 14:04:57 +0000

from my experience and various sources, the avr chip from which the arduino gets *all* its technical features (in case you didn’t know) seems pretty resistant to electric noise (efficient on-chip decoupling) so a 4-layer board was pretty overkill.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 13:25:10 +0000

I was wondering when they were going to do this. Now that it’s a 2 layer board, it’s as cheap as the Duemilanove. No, it’s not as small or as cheap as the ‘bare chip’, but the bare chip doesn’t have an a power regulator or usb. Hell, you can’t even interface the ‘bare chip’ to serial without a level shifter. So, add all that to your ‘bare chip’ and see which is smaller.

For me personally, I like the nano when space is a big concern (http://hackaday.com/2009/06/30/custom-car-door-keypad/) and the RBBB when you have a little more room.

By: Gary

Gary — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 10:06:03 +0000

Life2Death thanks for mentioning propeller, very interesting. I need to look into it more, see no mention of OSX/Mac development platform (still need to hit google).

By: liuc

liuc — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 09:30:06 +0000

IIRC they were advertising the 1st nano with something like “It�s a four-layer board with power and ground planes to help provide ICs with sufficient charge during switching and reduce noise (EMC) on high speed switching I/O pins. Ground plane help reduce radiation (EMI). Power plane is low in inductance; therefore any transients that may develop on the power line will be at lower levels. ”
maybe the manufacturing costs were too high?
or the 4 layers board was not worth? ;)

By: Taylor

Taylor — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 05:00:26 +0000

AWW CRAP! And I just bought a serial board and a Duemilanove!
Sucks, man. >:(

By: Life2Death

Life2Death — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 04:29:03 +0000

I’m really curious why no one is using the propeller for anything. Really. Sure, I assume spin sucks, but it works and the chip can run on C or assembly just as easy.

By: macona

macona — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 02:41:35 +0000

I bought one of these a couple months ago. Cheaper:

http://www.pjrc.com/teensy/

By: Novice

Novice — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 01:54:31 +0000

“Like other new Arduino designs, it’s using the ATmega328 instead of the ATmega168″

Blow up the picture of the ATmega :)