- Is the Arduino 2560 the more
cowbell of Arduino boards? (upbeat electronic music) Here it is: the big guns
of the Arduino family. (cowbell rings) The Arduino Mega 2560 Rev3. Now listen, I love the Arduino Uno. But hear me out. Going from the Arduino Uno
to the Arduino Mega 2560, is like upgrading from
a soccer dad's minivan to a double-decker bus. Sure, they both get you
from point A to point B. But one allows you to
bring the kitchen sink. Let's start with the basics. The Arduino Mega has 54 input output pins. The jargon for that is GPIO, and that stands for general
purpose input output. 54 pins, that is three times
as many as the Arduino Uno. The Mega can also assign more
PWM pins than the Arduino Uno. It's also got 16 analog inputs. That's 10 more than an Arduino Uno, and twice as many as the Arduino Nanos. So that's a lotta technical
jargon, but in short it means the Arduino Mega 2560 Rev3 can connect to a ton
more sensors, actuators, and other peripherals, than the Arduino Uno or the Nanos can. It's like your dining room table. When you have a bunch of
family over at the holidays and you start puttin' in those leafs, there's a whole bunch more space for everybody to sit down together. The Arduino Mega 2560
also has a ton more memory than the Arduino Uno. It's got eight kilobytes of SRAM, four times as much as the Arduino Uno. 256 kilobytes of flash memory. Eight times as much as the Arduino Uno. And four kilobytes of EEPROM, four times as much as the Arduino Uno. West side! That's pretty stupid, Josh. I don't even know what
that means, that's dumb. This means the Arduino Mega has more space to write your programs, more space to run your programs, and more space to store data for later. And let's not forget the multiple UARTs that an Arduino Mega 2560 packs. If you're accustomed to Arduino Uno, then having a single serial
port's kinda the norm. The Arduino Mega has four UARTs. With four UARTs, you can communicate to multiple devices at the same time, like a Bluetooth module or a GPS module or other serial devices. Now the reason why the
Arduino Mega 2560 Rev3 has all this additional
stuff is right in the name. 2560 refers to the
ATmega2560 microcontroller, which is the brains of the
Arduino Mega Development Board. Another great thing about the Arduino Mega is that most of the shields
that are designed to work with the super common
Arduino Uno form factor, will also fit and work perfectly fine on the Arduino Mega 2560. Plus, the operating
voltage on the Arduino Mega is five volts, which is the
exact same as the Arduino Uno. So it makes for an easy upgrade from an existing Arduino Uno project. And finally, it's worth noting that all of the code that
you write for an Arduino Uno will work just fine on an Arduino Mega. Adjusting for pin numbers and
functionality accordingly. Maybe it's obvious to you, but if your project needs
lots of input output, or lots of serial ports,
or lots of memory, then the Mega could very
well be the best fit. Sometimes, though, when we get something, we like to get the bigger thing just 'cause we think it's gonna be better. Let me be perfectly honest here though. I'd say the majority of simple
microcontroller projects, where you have a couple inputs, you control a couple outputs, you have a little logic in between. For that, an Arduino Uno almost always has enough
I/O and enough memory, plus it costs a bit less. So I'd recommend getting an Arduino Mega when your project actually needs it. I guess one other reason might be if you keep an Arduino
board in your chest pocket, like one of those things,
and then somebody shoots you. The chance of the Arduino
Mega stopping the bullet might be bigger than an Arduino Uno, and definitely larger
than an Arduino Nano,
