#298 Four new Arduino Nano Boards: Test and Comparison (Every, 33 IoT, 33 BLE, 33 BLE Sense)

recently Arduino released four new ports they all look very similar but use utterly different microcontroller chips so we have to answer two questions do they know what they are doing and is it any good for us makers and of course how do they compare with the ESP 32 little youtubers here is the guy with the Swiss accent with a new episode and fresh ideas around sensors and microcontrollers remember if you subscribe you will always sit in the first row in this video we will look at these four new boards the Arduino Nano every the Nano 33 IOT the Nano 33 ble and the Nano 33 ble since and we will look into the following topics an overview of the capabilities of the board's we will also add a typical ESP 32 port for reference we will have a look into how the Arduino IDE supports a multi CPU architecture environment I'm sure we will find out bad things about boards if they exist we will test the ble and the Wi-Fi functions and measure power consumption and we will try to answer the essential questions what are the implications for the future of the Arduino platform and is there a new star born let's start with the past over a very long period all Arduino is used the same or very similar microcontroller chips short MC use this made life easy because during programming we only had to select the board and everything went smoothly libraries with a few exceptions were compatible with all Arduino boards then came some crazy developers and hijacked the arduino ide to be able to program other chips like the esp8266 and on a smaller scale STM chips arduino also the do a which used a completely different processor to deal with this situation a board manager was introduced its significant advantage is that we can program various MC use with the same Arduino code and that we do not have to learn a lot of new stuff all this happened a few years ago you see that fact if you go to your boards menu here you find all installed MCU architectures it starts with the Arduino Sam D where you find the new nano 33 IOT it goes on with the mega AVR where you find the Nano every then in the Arduino n RF 52 8x section you see the Nano 33 ble which is also good for the Nano 33 ble sense port in the Arduino AVR section you find all old ports none of the new boards is classified here then we go on to the Arduino arm the ESP 32 and the esp8266 port of course these sections are only shown if you installed the respective packages in the boards manager another important thing is the libraries often libraries are no more compatible with newer architectures because these new chips work entirely different in the past we often needed a different library for each port and in the beginning many libraries were not available for the esp8266 for example since then libraries were adapted to the different MCU architectures and often can't be used for many or all port architectures the esp8266 certainly got the most adapted libraries but many of them were also adapted to the ESP 32 so far I did not check if this is also true for the newer Sam D or an RF 52 architectures maybe you can contribute your knowledge if you work with these chips so the first learning is before you decide on one of the new boards try at least the intended libraries by compiling an example file for the boards in mind if you get compilation errors you can't forget it if not you might be lucky and the library works no guarantee though but why did I show you all these things under the hood first you have to know it if you decide to work with the new boards but second and probably more important these developments open entirely new possibilities as we saw before Arduino presented four different boards with three utterly different processor families this would have been impossible in the past and it might be risky today if library support would not be suitable but they did it and they are now responsible for adapting at least the most important libraries to all these new boards if not already done and we can assume Adafruit as the second significant library contributor and also an Arduino reseller will also adapt their libraries if not already done so we can go on to check out what the new boards are before we come back to the question what does this mean for the maker scene there are still a few things we have to consider in this new world the first is the voltages all Arduino swear 5 volts and all sensors were 5 volts - and therefore compatible this was a perfect world today we have to pay attention most of the newer ports are only 3.3 volts some like the esp8266 at least can be connected to 5 volt periphery but others like the Raspberry Pi can be destroyed if we connect their pins to 5 volts the same applies to the new boards except the Arduino Nano every it works on 5 volts and accepts 5 volts on its pins and therefore is highly compatible with the old Arduino world all other boards can be destroyed if you connect 5 volts to any of their pins this is why these ports have a 33 in their names because newer sensors anyway work on 3.3 volts I hardly use 5 volts in my projects anymore but we had to pay less attention to this fact when we only used esp8266 chips because their pins are 5 volts compatible i am not sure how the situation is with the ESP 32 the comparison of all boards show that the old Arduinos use 8-bit CPUs these are okay but can be quite slow especially if you have to do calculations the new boards except the Arduino every use 32-bit CPUs the ESP is used 32-bit right from the start these CPUs are much faster and usually also have more memory if we start with memory the esps still have way more memory than the rest of the boards this can be important if you want to do over the air or OTA updates next the CPU cores all Arduinos have one core the Nano 33 IOT has a so-called M 0 + core which is slower than the m4 core used in the every 33 beliefs and the ESP 32 has 2 cores here you see a comparison between the two arm course the m4 core supports many more floating-point operations so the 32-bit boards are clearly better than the rest in memory and speed but I did not do any benchmarks yet next come the connection possibilities all new boards have the needed connections like serial I square C SPI analog and digital GPIO s the 32-bit ports have two or more serials which is handy for debugging you can connect serial one to your sensor and still can use the serial monitor for debugging the ESP 32 and the ble Arduinos offer I square s support which can be used for audio applications if you want to know more you have to dig into the data sheets of the different parts a significant difference is USB while all old adrenals including the Nano every and also the ESP s do not offer native USB the Nano 33 IOT and the Nano 33 beliefs offer this functionality at least in hardware if we remember the Arduino Leonardo introduced this functionality which can simulate a keyboard or a mouse to test this functionality I tried the keyboard dot begin command and it worked on the Nano 33 IOT it did not work on the ble models maybe it will be implemented later next comes the supply for power the old Arduino and most esps use linear regulators which can be used up to about eight bolts before they get too hot the new Arduino all use a switching regulator which can be used up to 21 volts input and can deliver 1.2 ampere this is the right choice if you want to connect a module for example directly to a 12 volt battery the price and current is only 200 micro ampere not bad but for ble applications it might be too high but for sure you will have enough power also for your sensors or even some LEDs as expected the regulator of the Nano every outputs 5 volts then they added a 3.3 linear regulator for compatibility reasons all other parts produce only 3.3 volts there 5 fault pins are somehow connected to the USB plug one thing I detest is if I cannot read the pin names on the silkscreen we are makers and have to work with our boards all Arduino have the pins marked with a good quality silkscreen but unfortunately on the bottom side of the board if you saw their headers to the modules you cannot see them anymore the only way you can avoid that problem is to sort the modules upside down which is probably possible if you do not want to use the reset button or you print the layout and laminate the paper as I did with some other vital information and another small trick to keep your blood pressure low you always get this error message when you try to upload your sketch to the nonno every it took me a while to find out that this is only a warning and can be ignored I hope it will disappear in one of the next versions when I got the board's in my last mailbag I complained about not finding enough information this changed and I found the board definitions as well as the libraries for the different sensors on the board so we can check out the functionality which matters most for me I want to know if ple works because Nordic semiconductor the manufacture of the NRF 52m see use is well known for its ble and low-power chips frequent viewers know that I was disappointed by the EPL II functionality and especially the power consumption of the ESP 32 the NRF 52 840 chip should be a clear winner in this respect if Arduino did a good implementation so let's test and load the ble server sketch called battery monitor on the nano 33 ble without sensors like that we should get minimal power consumption the sketch measures battery voltage and transmits it over ble we can receive the signals using our smartphone or the Raspberry Pi unfortunately I was not capable of transferring data to an ESP 32 it connected but refused to receive data only the ble God knows why or maybe you know it during the compilation of the ble example I have time to tell you another not so lovely thing the compilation time is exceptionally long for the NRF fifty-two boards it is not seconds as with all other ports no it takes two full minutes for every compilation and upload for the ble battery monitor example I feel like in the 1900 and 80s where we had to wait till our eeproms were released by the UV light if you do not know what I'm talking about you can watch my last video about old chips and how all began you find a link in the description now the sketch is uploaded and we are ready the Arduino waits for a connection and we see battery monitor in the NRF connect on the iPhone as soon as we connect the Arduino starts to transmit values and we can read them on the smartphone cool but how much energy the Arduino consumes according to the child scope it is 22 to 24 million per with a power LED off there are no high current Peaks as with the ESP 32 this also is a good sign that Arduino did an excellent job on filtering power as expected this module consumes much less than the ESP 32 but the 22 to 24 million per is still way too much for a ble device typical ble beacons or sensors run many month on a button cell according to the datasheet the Nina P 306 module used on this port only consumes 4.9 milli ampere maximum with standby and sleep modes in the micro ampere range I would be glad to get an example file that uses these modes to reduce power to normal ple levels you might remember I ordered to ple boards the Nano 33 ble and the Nano 33 ble sense the boards are the same the only difference on the sense board the sensors are populated having such a density of sensors is handy because you can save time and a lot of space if you want to experiment with one or more of these sensors the price for the Nano 33 ble cents seems to be okay if you can get a decent shipping cost and if we get examples on how to use the sport at ble power consumption levels this would be a perfect deal for all who are interested in ble and sensors let's now have a look at the direct competitor to the ESP 32 the Nano 33 IOT it uses a full ESP 32 just for Wi-Fi it's central processor is a Sam D 21 which is much weaker than the ESP 32 and also has much less memory but this concept has the advantage that you are sure that Wi-Fi traffic is not influenced by your code the disadvantage is that from time to time you have to update the firmware of the Wi-Fi module you get the needed tools but it creates additional work the power consumption of this module clearly is dominated by the ESP 32 which creates the usual peaks of more than 250 milli ampere and an average current of around 80 milli ampere something interesting happens in this sketch it fetches the NTP time and then it executes a delay 10 seconds during the delay the whole module only consumes around 50 milli ampere this means that the ESP 32 has reduced power consumption during this time all my ESP 32 ports consume more than 80 million per even without Wi-Fi activity very interesting just that you do not need to search too long for this module you have to install the Wi-Fi Nena library which has its name from the Nena Wi-Fi module manufactured by you blocks the same company which is well known for its precise GPS chips and which is located in Switzerland just saying I promised to come back to the question what does this mean for us the makers in the past we had to use different development environments for each processor architecture and learn new tools if we decided to use the Arduino IDE our choice was quite small we were delighted when with the esp8266 and later the ESP 32 our choice for chips was extended and now this I read this Arduino announcement as a clear statement that our selection of MCU sketch speaker and picker and if we look at other major maker companies like spark fun or Adafruit we see precisely the same thing happen they extended their choice of Em's use on the airport and if we look at platform IO there these new chips are also supported even with free inline debugging I do not care too much about the Sam D 21 or 51 chips because they are not connected devices but I care a lot about the NRF 52 line these chips are low-power and connected this can be an improvement over the ESP 32 especially if you want to use ble maybe the next star is born' the Arduino Nano 33 ble costs 1950 the you blocks modules alone cost less than $10 in large quantities and we already see Chinese modules for less than $5 on Aliexpress what do you think summarized we saw how the support of the arduino ide evolved from a single CPU architecture to a multi CPU architecture we saw the importance of libraries in this game we also saw the importance of Arduino decision to use several new CPU families for the maker ecosystem we looked at the new 3.3 volt world and the dangers coming from this change and we had a look at the different CPU architectures and saw that the execution speed especially for complex calculations differs from board to board we compared the memories of the various sports and saw that the ESP 32 definitely is a good choice if you need ulti a firmware upgrade we saw that all boards offer enough connectivity it became clear that the Nano every is a dinosaur because it was designed to be compatible with the old arduino world in my opinion it is not needed all nano 33 boards offer native USB support but only the Nano 33 IOT offers software support to act as a USB host we had a look at the power supplies and saw that the new Arduino boards could be used up to 21 volts which is a clear advantage unfortunately we discovered that on all new Arduino boards pins are marked only on the bottom side they cannot be seen in typical maker situations we tested the ble functions and measured power consumption the functionality worked but the power consumption was disappointing I hope we will get better software support in the future we also found out that the compilation time for the ble chips is uncomfortably long compared with all other boards we also checked the Wi-Fi functionality and power consumption of the Nano 33 IOT board it behaved as expected for makers ESP 32 ports still are the better choice for professional usage arguments can be different because of the secure element present on this port all in all we learned that we entered into a new area where our MCU choices will be extended which is an encouraging message I still assume it will be a rough ride as it was when we got the first esp8266 chips but especially for the Nordic chips I am pretty sure it will be rewarding so stay tuned what we will see in future episodes on this channel I hope this video was useful or at least interesting for you if true please consider supporting the channel to secure its future existence you find the links in the description thank you bye

Channel: Andreas Spiess

Views: 167,478

Rating: 4.917726 out of 5

Keywords: arduino, arduino project, beginners, diy, do-it-yourself, eevblog, electronics, esp32, esp32 project, esp32 tutorial, esp32 weather station, esp8266, greatscott, hack, hobby, how to, iot, nodemcu, project, simple, smart home, ttgo, wemos, wifi, tutorial, Arduino nano, Arduino nano 33, Arduino nano 33 comparison, Arduino nano comparison, Arduino Nano Every, Arduino Nano 33 IoT, Arduino Nano 33 BLE, Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense, Arduino Nano test, Arduino Nano 33 Test

Id: 8GLXSebQVCE

Length: 22min 15sec (1335 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 17 2019