Will Arduino Nano be discontinued?

I use Arduino nano for education projects. For me is a piece of gem. So far I could not find a similar (genuine) Arduino board sharing the same advantages (for me):
a) easy to mount on breadboard
b) included in the IDE
c) cheap

I noticed Arduino nano is not available in the store here. Also Almost impossible to find a genuine one (or at least a reliable clone) in my country, since few months ago.

Would somebody be so kind to inform me (and perhaps others) whether the Arduino Nano (genuine) is going to be discontinued? And if positive, what alternative are (or are going to be) on the market this year?

Thank you very much!

Hi,

I'm not sure about arduino themself. Where are you located?

There are several good legal clone manufacturers in China.. I do not see the demand for Nano going away any time soon.

Basically two choices based on USB interface chip: Genuine FTDI more expensive.

See our version here: YourDuino Nano V3

This is genuine FTDI interface.

DISCLAIMER: Mentioned stuff from my own shop...

I brought some clones. First batch - 6 months ago - was of top quality, in my opinion. Second one was terrible - I fought one hour to align the pins. I am not sure about electric diagram. I shall see in the coming days.

I need some decent quality boards, I do not have the time to tinker and explore. Some people here say Nano is going to be discontinued. I suspect this will affect the availability of the clones as well.

Arduino recently made a significant change to the Nano by switching to a different bootloader. This required a change to the hardware definition and the documentation. It's hard for me to believe they would go to that trouble just before discontinuing the board. On the other hand, I have always found the way Arduino runs its business to be completely mystifying so anything is possible.

I agree that it would be very nice if Arduino would be more transparent about the status of their boards. We see some products marked as retired, then suddenly they're available for purchase again, but permanently available or just a small run they're selling off before retiring again? They have some excellent communication channels in the Arduino Blog, Arduino Facebook page, Arduino Instagram account, Arduino Twitter account, Arduino forum, and Arduino developers mailing list but they rarely use these channels to get the word out about important changes.

None of this concerns me as long as I can buy the chips but I understand how it's a huge problem for others because I go through the same thing with my business where I will develop products that rely on a specific raw material only to learn through the grapevine that the manufacturer stopped making that essential item without any warning or formal announcement. One company has done that so often over the last couple of years that I have abandoned doing any further business with them.

falexandru:
I suspect this will affect the availability of the clones as well.

Why would it?

If the genuine nano will no longer be available, then large manufacturers like Adafruit will see the nano market shrinking, because of low apetence of the users to mount items that appear to be to old or more advanced items being avaialble.

Something like the resolution in photography: 6 MPx is more than enough for a decent print. But who will buy a 6 MPx photocamera?

Nano is a genial component. I am not talking about electronics (I am not the one to judge from this point of view) but about flexibility and easy of use. It has everything a beginner may wish. It is absolutely perfect for the educational purposes.

Nano is limited to what is needed and cheap enough not to cry when starts communicated MSS Protocol. Mountable on breadboard or perf. Whatever power source will fit.

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To be honest, I am afraid that the Arduino team will improve it to the point all these qualities will fade. They may enhance electronics so making it more difficult to use, more expensive because of useless capacities and so on.

There is a saying: "Do not improve what is good enough!" :slight_smile:

In the short term, I think Arduino's hypothetical discontinuation of the Nano would only encourage 3rd party manufacturers since it means Arduino will no longer exist as a competitor for sales of that board.

If you see the hypothetical discontinuation of the Nano as a step towards an eventual phasing out of the AVR architecture, then I would agree that in the long run that will lead to lower production of those boards but I'm sure as long as Microchip is still selling the chips someone will be putting them on boards. Certainly Arduino has not created a new AVR board for some time, unless you count the Uno WiFi and Leonardo ETH boards created by Arduino.org or the Gemma board created by Adafruit, all of which seem to have gone by the wayside quite quickly. But as far as the community, I think the AVR is still by far the most used architecture and the best supported. As long as these chips continue to meet our needs (which they will) and Microchip continues to manufacture them (which they will), the AVR will continue to go strong regardless of whether Arduino decides they want to make money selling them. Heck, Microchip/Atmel is has recently been releasing new AVR parts. The ATmega328PB is pin compatible with the ATmega328P used on the Nano and that chip is already available on Nano form-factor boards.

I agree that the Nano is the ideal board for a beginner. That's the board I'll be giving my nephew to get him started as soon as he's old enough.

falexandru:
more expensive because of useless capacities

Well, to be fair, a lot of the new microcontrollers are actually significantly cheaper than the Nano's ATmega328P. Even more so when native USB allows them to replace not only the ATmega328P but also the FT232 USB chip. But I'm certainly happy to pay an extra couple dollars for the good old AVR.

In my opinion since Arduino targets the hobby sector (and education to a certain extent), the main points are both the tutorials the and community support.

The longer a board survives, the richer the experience and on-line references.

I kove Nano because is simple and there are piles of info on the net. But I agree that a bit more memory and a bit more processing power will be nice. More support to I2C and shift to 3.3 V as universal may also help, in my view.

From my experience, however, none of the Arduino products are suitable for education. They lack the pedagogy perspective.

I am working right now to "develop" a suitable Arduino board for kids, based on nano. :slight_smile:

, none of the Arduino products are suitable for education. They lack the pedagogy perspective.

Please tell us more about that. What do you base this on?

There are more Arduino-based educational kits than those from any other microcomputer.

The Sparkfun and Adafruit kits and the many Chinese kits sell many to education.

I sell thousands of kits a year, based significantly on the Educational Material I supply.

What do you mean by "Pedagogy Perspective"?? Can you give an example of a different microcontroller or a microcomputer board that has the Teaching Methods provided with it that you would prefer?

Yep, is quite a long and interesting discussion. Indeed, there are literally thousand of education-targeted products and activities each year.

I am talking about using Arduino with kids for STEM purposes and integrative approaches, not about its general use in education.

When I will be ready with the new Education Board, I will certainly post it here. It is to be developed and checked with kids. I am on my own, so it will take sometime.

I rather postpone the answer to the moment I will finish my work on this. What would be the reason of critics, while not able to put something in place?! There is also easy to explain by example than to write a lot of lines.

You will see the huge difference, I am sure.

Today at 02:47 pm
Yep, is quite a long and interesting discussion.

I would be interested in following up on this over time with you. I think we are aiming at the same kind of results with young people.

OTHER: About Nanos: I just updated my page that talks about the different Nano USB interfaces.

The page is HERE and it includes good photos of the different USB chips..

The basis of pedagogy were built before the digital era. So it is very little experience in how to transfer knowledge and abilities today.

Even so, the stress on transferring knowledge, also as a result of the Skinner's approach (questionable successful) , in detriment of understanding and self-learning w persists.

In my opinion, what an educator shall do today is to go back to theory and start develop a method adapted to digital era and lower age of understanding.

In my personal view, the Vygotsky theory of proximal development, as well as the cutting-the-edge research in theory of knowledge - based on quantum representation are the most promising and I base my work on them.

Although it sounds very esoteric, the practical approach is simple.

In our case, the first step is to abandon the idea of "learning by playing". This is a non-sense: any play is teaching something. If you go wit the "learning by playing" we end up by simply "playing" but in a stresfull and rigid environment.

The second step is to make things visible. Arduino is not visible.

The third step is to add-on pieces of flexible environment.

Hi,

The basis of pedagogy were built before the digital era.

Well. Hmmmm... There are many many PedagogieS and hundreds of books about the Process Of Teaching and the Process of Learning.

I don't think the recipients of Teaching, who are doing most of the Learning: (Humans, mostly young Humans) have actually changed much, certainly not in the 70+ years since I started to "go to school".

I think the area that is most worth trying to understand is the "Theory Of Knowledge". Most IB (International Baccalaureate) schools (Typically International Schools in other countries, but increasingly in USA), have their students take a significant class that the kids call "TOK". My wife was involved in teaching some of that class in Saudi Arabia and North Africa and I, as the Nosy Engineer, followed some of it and read part of the book used. It seemed to make a lot of sense to me. And many kids connected with the ideas. (These are High School Juniors and Seniors)..

The big change is in the available Media. And hands-on learning is much more workable than it was in 1946.

You said

The second step is to make things visible. Arduino is not visible.

Yes, and I cover that situation a lot. See:

This is from THIS Page which is used by hundreds of students.

I don't think any hands-on electronics device or system is any better than Arduino. The Pedagogy applied is what matters.

I notice the Nano is available for purchase from the Arduino Store when location is set to America/Asia/Oceania.

I am talking about 10-14 years old kids - who are my primary target.

They are many books, I agree but have a look at the fundamentals - very little - if any has been developed to respond to the digital era.

The STEM is one of the few brand-new concepts. But even so, if we think to the philosophy in Ancient Greece or to the early polymaths, not even this concept is quite new. Not to mention that despite whistle and bells, I do not know real STEM undertakings at mass-scale.

I agree however that one shall base his/her projects on a particular set of pre-existing knowledge. And this is why I picked Vygotsky: some perennial ideas and easy to his transfer concepts into methods and concepts for the digital era.

I also developed my own pedagogical approach, based on shape representation. I checked this with 10 years old kids, to the extent I can in a non-supervised environment. It looks worth advancing.

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"Rapid reward" - this means that a kid shall get some tangible results in literally minutes.

"Visibility" applies mostly to 8-12 age kids- the only one I am aware to respond at least partially to this request is the ELENCO electricity set.

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I am learning and applying such novelty ideas in my work with kids. Unfortunately, in my location, pedagogy is not financed (and not of much interest I may say), so I am on my own.

ToK looks fine, I agree. But to what extent all these approaches and theories are really applied?

My point is we no longer learn. The costs of schooling in USA rised dramatically over past decade. In my area the time in school doubled in two decades.

Results? Nothing. Kids hate school, parents spent money. Long discussion here as well.

But why? In my opinio, simpley beceuase we no longer need to learn, in the classical sense. We need to be empowered by the force of knowing. Media alone cant do that. How many hours spent a kid to learn how to "learn"? As an adult, I had to self-learn a lot of subject. I am prepared to do so? No! I was trained by gathering knowledge. Which is different from what I do now. And different from what I need.

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In the Arduino world. adults think to themselves. The use their imagination about what kid may want. They target their parents or based the concepts on their own childhood, decades ago.

As an example, have a look to LEGO - decades ago they produced wonderful toys that stimulated imagination. What they do now? Pre-shaped sets. Follow the "instructions".

What Arduino does? Offers "examples", "libraries" - all being very successful in destroying imagination, creativity. Which are primary qualities a human these days need. We do not teach children, we suffocate them.

Is this approach successful however at later stages (14-20 years old)? Yes! But I suspect not because the young people are more endowed to swallow this, but because they are already trained in social acceptance of what the society does to them, no matter what they feel.

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Maybe the thread is now more suitable for the Education section of the Forum :-)).