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.



Nano's come in two different "types", the first will have the same Atmel Atmega328 (the same as the UNO and other Arduino) and the other will have Atmel Atmega168.  The only difference between the two is memory storage, the 168 has 0.512KB EEPROM, 1KB of SRAM and 16KB of FLASH while the 328 has 1KB EEPROM, 2KB SRAM and 32KB of FLASH.
With that being noted there really is not a lot of difference between the two, if you are getting started and don't want to do too much with it then the 168 is just right it also tends to be a tiny bit cheaper, also if you wright your code well you probably won’t even need the extra space... a challenge for you!

*Let’s get started*

For this posting I shall be using the Atmel Atmega328 versions on both the genuine and the clone.

As you may have seen in my UNO posting (Link here if you have not had a look yet {opens new window}) I shall be using the same red lines and numbers with the corresponding information below.

Please excuse the dodgy soldering on my clones, you normally have to assemble to header pins yourself when they arrive.

*Let’s get started for real this time*

Kicking things of with the genuine

So this is the top view of the Nano, unlike the UNO there are components on the bottom side.

1. Digital pins 2 to 12
2. Ground / 0 voltage pin
3. One of two reset pins
4. Digital pins 0 and 1 dual role as TX and RX pins
5. Top to bottom; TX, RX, Power On and Inbuilt (tied to pin 13) LED
6. In Circuit Serial Programming 
7. Ground / 0 Voltage pin
8. One of the two reset pins
9. +5 volts pin
10. Analogue 0 to 7 pins
11. Reset button
12. +3.3 volts pin
13. Final digital pin 13
14. The Atmel Atmega328 micro controller in SMD package
15. USB socket
16. Resonator for 14

And now the bottom side, slightly less interesting!

1. USB to Serial chip, it’s a FTDI  FT232RL
2. Male pins from the top side.

Moving on to the clone

1.  Reset button
2.  Ground /  0 voltage
3. +5 volts pin
4. Analogue 0 to 7 pins
5. Voltage reference pin
6. +3.3 volts pin
7. Digital pin 13
8. The Atmel Atmega328 micro controller in SMD package
9. USB socket
10.  Digital pins 2 to 12
11. Resonator for 8
12. From top to bottom: inbuilt , power, TX and Rx LED
13. ICSP

And the final photo of the bottom.

1. Male pins from the top side
2. USB to Serial chip, it’s a FTDI  FT232RL
3. Resonator for 2
4. Another set of the male pins.