Hello guys, as you all know, arduino has alooooot of clones out there. on eBay itself there are tones of them! however I just want to share , my experiences regarding clone boards. so far i have bought an UNO, Nano, Micro Pro and a Mega from ebay. I have 3 original UNOs. I was very pleased with the prices of the boards of cuz, but in the end i got what i paid for. i noticed that not all the digital ports are working on the boards that i receive, and that the input pins are not well placed -.- . This makes it very hard for other shields to be place on it! One more thing i could not understand is that the clone boards always use very very bright LED lights for the power! its abit annoying to be honest.
To all the users out there, would you use a clone arduino for your projects? has anyone used a clone arduino in any major projects? Did it go well? i want to hear your stories haha
The flash memory is just the '328Ps flash memory. Processing speed is the same as any other '328P, as fast as your code allows.
If you have the shift register data in an array, the outputs can be updated blazingly fast:
PORTB =PORTB & B11111011; // clear B2 (SS pin low)
for (x=0; x<12; x=x+1){
SPI.transfer(dataArray[x]);
}
PORTB = PORTB | B00000100; // set B2 (SS pin high to update the output register)
I think this updates the outputs in something like 150uS. (0.15mS) (about 1uS/byte, plus 12uS each pass thru the for loop.
Skipping the for loop and just performing 12 SPI.transfers would be really fast, something like 15uS.
PORTB =PORTB & B11111011; // clear B2 (SS pin low)
SPI.transfer(dataArray[0]);
SPI.transfer(dataArray[1]);
SPI.transfer(dataArray[2]);
SPI.transfer(dataArray[3]);
SPI.transfer(dataArray[4]);
SPI.transfer(dataArray[5]);
SPI.transfer(dataArray[6]);
SPI.transfer(dataArray[7]);
SPI.transfer(dataArray[8]);
SPI.transfer(dataArray[9]);
SPI.transfer(dataArray[10]);
SPI.transfer(dataArray[11]);
PORTB = PORTB | B00000100; // set B2 (SS pin high to update the output register)
If one needs more flash and SRAM, then jumping up to a '1284P chip will provide 128K flash, 16 SRAM, and 10 more IO pins.
That can be arranged in an Uno compatible layout also with USB/Serial on the board, or off (shown off here).
I also started building my own clones. I've built some based on the ATmega328P and on the ATmega1284P. I'm not a fan of shields and don't use any. Shields wont fit in my boards. But it makes it easier to design a board
I play a lot with servos, 3.3V I2C sensors and wireless nRF24L01 modules. So I designed a board with a 3A switch mode power supply, an I2C logic level converter and a header for the nRF24L01 module. And I put a row of 5V and GND pins next to most I/O pins. Makes it a lot easier to connect servos and sensors to the micro controller. I designed my boards in Eagle, not that hard to learn, and had the PCB's made by Seeedstudio.
Looks really cool, might give a go at making own clone! just worry that it might fail thats all,because it happened to me once. wired up a clone UNO and it works very inconsistently...=(
Calling an Arduino compatible board a clone is wrong to me and takes away from the whole Arduino community. It really bugs me that everyone uses this terminology.
It is not possible to clone an open-source board. Well, you could but it would be a really stupid thing to do since they publish the design. Cloning is taking an original and creating a copy of it. That is not what an Arduino compatible board is. When I create an Arduino board, I purchase a real ATMega chip and install the Arduino bootloader. Nothing clones there. I then program it using the Arduino IDE. Nothing cloned there either. So what is being cloned?
This is the same thing that all the Arduino compatible board manufactures do.
However, there are some that then print a fake Arduino logo and trademark. Those are not clones either. They are fakes! And if they are not illegal, they should be.
