Cheap Arduino compatible boards are same as original
Probably you have noticed that Arduino is spread worldwide. It would be ridiculous to see one manufacturer producing them. The Arduino group produces an original board that is named Arduino. This is their trademark. But being an open-source product, Arduino has become popular in almost all workshops, so demand is enormous. Since building plans are public, other electronics manufacturers started building Arduino compatible boards. These are the same Arduino boards, but with Arduino’s name and logo removed. It is 100% compatible with standard Arduino that works with software tools, extensions, and modules. Arduino compatible Uno R3 Rev3 development board is one of the most known boards. Because this form factor is the first Arduino step into the community, it became a reference shape for majority shields and other products. Even today, great boards with Arduino functionality still carry this pin arrangement to accept shields. UNO evolved from Duemilanove boards that carry FTDI based USB to serial driver chips. UNO has Atmega16U2 instead, which is programmed as a USB to serial converter. Using AVR chip gives much more flexibility to use Arduino as different USB peripheral like HID-compliant mouse, keyboard, or memory. Since UNO’s appearance, it has already passed three revisions.…
