I hope this is the right forum for this question.. mods please move it and my apologies if it's in the wrong spot.
Anyway, I recently bought an Arduino Mega from Amazon which was listed as "by Arduino" and it cost $44.99 which made me think it was genuine (because the cheap-o clones are usually around $19.99).
So today I start doing some mods to it and, looking at it, it doesn't look at all like the Mega R3 I bought at Radio Shack over a year ago. In fact, it doesn't even say "R3" on the board... just "Mega".
(click pic for full size)
By the way, the 4 pin connector and the ground lug I put on... it didn't come that way.
DrAzzy:
Did you also remove the PTC fuse and put a 0 ohm resistor in it's place?
Also, I don't really know what we define as official anymore, since the "official" board manufacturer went rogue....
Oops I forgot to mention that one! Good eye!
The polyfuse on the board had a crack in it causing me a lot of grief (intermittent failures to upload a sketch).
The part I replaced it with looks like a 0 ohm jumper, but it's actually a 1 amp (1000 mA) polyfuse (I didn't have any of the proper 500 mA parts on hand). Why it's marked "0" I have no idea.
Well your board is not genuine any more. It may have been at one point. As DrAzzy points out, genuine was a grey area for a while, since the Italian board manufacturer went rogue. UNO and Mega genuine boards are made by Seeedstudio using the Genuino name for Asian markets. Adafruit makes genuine Arduino UNO for the US market. We'll have to wait and see what arduino.cc and Massimo Banzi are cooking up regarding manufacturing arrangements for a genuine Mega in the USA, it may be Adafruit for that board also. The rogue company owns the Arduino name in Italy, and it may stay that way.
dmjlambert:
Well your board is not genuine any more. It may have been at one point. As DrAzzy points out, genuine was a grey area for a while, since the Italian board manufacturer went rogue. UNO and Mega genuine boards are made by Seeedstudio using the Genuino name for Asian markets. Adafruit makes genuine Arduino UNO for the US market. We'll have to wait and see what arduino.cc and Massimo Banzi are cooking up regarding manufacturing arrangements for a genuine Mega in the USA, it may be Adafruit for that board also. The rogue company owns the Arduino name in Italy, and it may stay that way.
I guess it comes down to what group of people you want to receive the benefit from the sale. Do you want to support the "genuine" Arduino manufacturer who stopped associating with the founders of Arduino, claimed the Arduino name for himself, applied for the trademark in Italy in secret apart from the founding team, and stopped paying royalties to the founding team? Or support the founding team and business which runs arduino.cc and which had it's manufacturing jerked out from under it, and is now establishing new manufacturing agreements with folks like Seeedstudio and Adafruit?
Ok, I understand. That makes sense. And yes, the blame is shared and it is unfortunate the rift happened. Nevertheless, I do have a certain amount of sympathy for arduino.cc, and I am maintaining that point while I post on their web site forum. I don't have the point of view you should stop supporting any particular manufacturer, and I apologize if I came across that way.
pepe:
I had to use the IDE version 1.7 because the version 1.6 had too many unsolved problems during a long time.
When people say "I had to use IDE version XXX to solve my problem", what that really means is "I needed version x.y.z of AVR-GCC to solve my problem.
When I write Arduino code, I use a plain text editor (nano) and a small Bash script that uses a generic Makefile template, pulls in all the Arduino dependencies, compiles the whole thing and (if I want to) also uploads the resulting .HEX file to the Arduino.
My compiler (for AVR) is avr-gcc 4.9.2 (I'm afraid to compile the new 5.x compiler since 4.9.2 is working so nicely).
When developing a program, I just use one line with multiple commands such as this:
This one line edits the code, then compiles it, then uploads it to the Arduino, then runs the serial terminal.
If there is a bug, I just kill the serial terminal and hit the up arrow. The whole line is recalled and I can do another edit/compile/upload/test sequence super easy.
pepe:
For sure, "genuine" is hard to define now.
This board looks like it has been repaired.
The board I pictured is MODIFIED by me. Out of the box it was pristine.
I changed the 16M resonator to a 22.1184 crystal, added a little wire loop (ground) for the scope probe ground lead, installed the 4 position header on the bottom (to connect a heatsinked TO-220 LM7805 to power the board) and lifted the Vin pin of the little 5V regulator on the board to disconnect it (so the external 7805 does all the work).
I fried the USB polyfuse (embarassing mistake on my part... don't ask) and replaced it. It LOOKS like a zero ohm jumper, but it really is a 1 amp polyfuse (I didn't have any of the proper 500 mA parts on hand).
There's actually one more mod that I didn't mention... I absolutely LOVE BLUE LED's, so I replaced the green power LED (labelled "ON") with a blue one!
All my stuff has blue LED's... even my computer keyboard (an IBM Model M "clicky" keyboard) the three LED's for num-lock, caps lock and scroll lock were green.... now they are blue!
