SparkFun Arduino Comparison Guide

if you haven't heard of Arduino it's an entire ecosystem created for playing with and working with microcontrollers there are many boards available that are considered to be Arduino compatible there's also software you can download which is the Arduino development environment that you can use to program the different boards almost everything in the arduino world is considered to be open-source that means i can go online and find the schematics for these different boards and i can go and get the source code for the development environment one of the other cool thing is about arduino is its ability to stack with these things called shields for example we have this mp3 player shield that we can stack on top of a few different Arduinos this allows us to play music and other sound files sparkman offers many different arduino compatible boards that you can program with the arduino software first up we have Arduinos flagship and most popular board the uno the arduino uno is built around the atmel atmega 328p microcontroller this runs at 16 megahertz it offers 14 digital input/output pins or i/o pins and six of those can be used for pulse width modulation or PWM on the other side you'll notice another six pins that can be used for analog inputs the 328p offers 32 kilobytes of flash memory which is used for holding programs and 2 kilobytes of RAM notice that the input/output pins run at 5 volts which means you want to be careful if you're trying to connect it to 3.3 volt logic you could easily damage something there are two versions of the you know available first is the plated through-hole version or PTH you can remove the microcontroller if you really want just be careful doing it and then there's the SMD or surface mount version this uses a lower profile version of the microcontroller but offers the same functionality as the PTH version the uno is a great board if you're just getting started in the world of Arduino or embedded electronics there's tons of documentation online you can find about it next we have the SPARC fun red board this is SPARC funds version of the Arduino with similar functionality to the uno it combines several of our favorite features from different Arduinos into one board it is a bit cheaper and it allows us to control revisions and features when we teach classes with Arduino then we have the Arduino Pro this uses the same 328p microcontroller so it has more less the same functionality as the uno the biggest difference you'll notice is that the pro comes without headers this gives the user the option to solder on wires male or female headers whatever they want there are two different versions of the pro the 3.3 volt version and the 5 volt version you'll notice that some electronics can only handle 3.3 volts you can easily damage the sensitive electronics with something like 5 volts notice that the speed has been reduced to 8 megahertz for the 3.3 volt version but the 5 volt version still has a whopping 16 megahertz the Arduino Pro does not have built-in USB support so you're going to need a serial cable or an FTDI breakout to program them make sure that the voltage of the cable or the breakout matches the voltage listed on your Arduino Pro otherwise you could end up hurting some electronics if you thought the Pro is cool check out the pro mini it's exactly like the pro but in a tiny form-factor like the pro the pro mini comes in 3.3 and 5 volt versions and you will need a serial cable or FTDI breakout to program them the pro mini is my favorite Arduino board to prototype with it's small it's cheap and it's easy to fit on a breadboard because there's a 3.3 volt version available it's great to use with 3.3 volts sensors then we have the pro micro this is similar to the pro mini but you don't need a special serial cable or FTDI breakout to program it the first thing you'll notice about the pro micro is that there's a micro USB port on the board it also uses a different chip it uses the atmega 32 u 4 which has built-in USB support there are 12 digital i/o pins and 5 of those can be used for PWM there's an additional 4 analog input pins on the board as well like the 328p the chip contains 32 kilobytes of flash but there's a bit more RAM at 2.5 kilobytes like the pro mini the pro micro comes in 3.3 volt and 5 volt versions where the 3.3 volt version runs at 8 megahertz and the 5 volt version runs at 16 megahertz one cool feature about the pro micro is that it can be used as a USB device for example I made this simple USB joystick that I can use to control the mouse around my screen next we have the micro view this is a small Arduino compatible module with a built in a LED display the O LED display is monochrome with a 64 by 48 pixel resolution the micro view uses the same atmega328p microcontroller found in many of the other arduino products there's 12 digital i/o pins and 6 analog input pins notice that the pins run at 3.3 volt logic there are a few ways to program the micro view although the best is to use the micro view programmer this is a really cool device to use if you just want to make some simple graphics and then there's the Arduino mega 2560 this is an Ono on steroids the mega uses the at mega 2560 processor running at 16 megahertz there's a whopping 54 digital i/o pins and 15 of those can be used for PWM there's an additional 16 analog inputs as well it has 256 kilobytes of flash which is a lot of room for your programs and eight kilobytes of RAM this is a great device for when you need a ton of pins it also has 4 hardware serial ports where the uno only has one I find it really useful for when you're connecting to other serial peripherals and you need to send debugging information back to your computer this is the teensy 3.1 made by Paul and Robin at PJ our c-calm the teensy can be programmed with the arduino software but it's built around the freescale MK 20 DX 256 this is a 32-bit ARM Cortex M 4 processor running at 72 megahertz this is 4 times faster than the uno it has 256 kilobytes of flash 64 kilobytes of RAM and 34 IO pins all of these can be digital i/o pins 12 of them can be PWM and 21 can be used for analog input this thing has some serious processing power and it's great for projects where you want that kind of power or you need that number of pins but you don't want to go to a full operating system like Linux running on a single board computer it's powerful enough for example to run our 32 by 32 LED panel finally we have the Arduino Yeun and this is closer to a single board computer the Arduino Yeun has two processors on board underneath the metal can is an atheros a our 93 31 which is typically found in Wi-Fi routers it works at 400 megahertz and runs a custom version of Linux known as open wrt you additionally there's an atmega 32 you four on board which can be programmed with arduino it has 32 kilobytes of flash and 2.5 kilobytes of RAM much like the pro micro there's some features on the yoon not found on other arduino boards for example it has Ethernet and Wi-Fi already on board and it can work as a USB host so you can do things like plug in a flash drive there's a micro USB port for programming power and communications and a micro SD card slot on the back side there's 20 i/o pins of which seven of those can be used for PWM and 12 for analog input you can program Linux directly using a command line over serial through the 32 u4 or logging in with something like SSH you can write Python programs in Linux as open wrt yoon comes pre-loaded with Python 2.7 the Yoon is a great way to network your electronics projects and get started with the Internet of Things there are definitely more arduino compatible boards than what I've shown you here but I hope I've given you some idea about what's available in the world of Arduino it's a great place to start if you've never played with microcontrollers or you just want to prototype some electronics quickly check out learn sparkfun comm to see some cool projects and learn more about arduino you

Channel: SparkFun Electronics

Views: 976,668

Rating: 4.9042993 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: hjRSwBcLcSU

Length: 8min 30sec (510 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 27 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/KawaiiUmiushi]

This guide is a tad out of date, being published In 2015. It's a nice little introduction but has overlooked the introduction of cheap wireless boards, popular clones, and the insanity that is Adafruit's lineup.

[u/sarctastic]

How the landscape has changed with esp8266, NodeMCU variants, esp32, etc.