The Nano! Up close and personell

So it’s time to show the Nano in all its small sized glory!

The Nano is pretty much a small UNO there are very little differences between the two apart from the size difference, the lack of an external power jack and the connection pins which all can be seen in the photos below.

The Nano also has the handy advantage that is can be plugged straight in to a breadboard for super quick prototyping, something that the UNO lacks unless you have lots of jumper wires! You will notice that the all pins other than the ICSP pins are pointing down so they can be bread boarded, they are male pins rather than female ones that you will find on the UNO.

The UNO up close and personnel

So let’s is started showing you the details of the Arduino UNO, I'll point out the inputs and outputs and a few key components of interest.

I will show you the genuine boards and also a few of my clones I have floating around. You will be able to see the differences between the Duel in Line Package (DIP) and the Surface Mounted (SMD) Atmel Atmega328 chips.

Original Vs. Clone

*Introduction*

Some people will swear elegance to either side but really which one really is better?

In the red corner we have the Arduino royalty, the clones are nothing more than cheap rip offs of a glorious product that deserves no place alongside the mighty originals!

And in the blue corner we have the rebel clone supporters, their view of the originals is an expensive way of doing things that have be done cheaper and thus enabling the masses to get in to electronics.

So what are the differences and should I be worried about what side I am backing?