[chbot] Arduino for $3! & link for 2.2 inch touch screen

[Chris Hellyar]

Bit of a slow reply...

I built up some kits using Nano's that had to be cheap for a club project a couple of years ago and bought a few of the very cheap ones around the place and wound up going back to the ebay seller I normally get ones with real FTDI's on them at about the $6 USD mark in volumes of 20up.

From memory the cheap Chinese chipset ones just worked on my windows 8 netbook, did not work at all on the mac or windows XP, and were 50/50 on Debian 7.6.  I tried windows 7 in a Virtual box on top of my linux and it magically worked even though plugged directly into a non-virtual win7 the didn't even come up with the 'finding a driver' type messages.

You can however use them via the ICSP connection if you really want a cheap carrier for a ATmega 328, and you don't want to use the USB to re-program it...  So if you're making something in volume sufficient to make the saving worthwhile, but not large enough volume to justify fabbing a board with an SMD micro etc the cheap boards could be an option.

Of course I can't vouch for the quality of the other components on any of the cheap Arduino boards and if you want it to be running in 10yrs time I'd suggest spending a few more bucks and getting 'branded' modules/boards or fabing your own.

Just m2c worth.

-----Original Message-----
From: "Mark Atherton" <markaren1 at xtra.co.nz>
Sent: Tuesday, 21 October, 2014 06:18
To: "Christchurch Robotics" <chchrobotics at lists.linuxnut.co.nz>
Subject: Re: [chbot] Arduino for $3! & link for 2.2 inch touch screen

Volker,

What experience and problems have you had with the FTDI replacement 
USB-serial bridge IC on the Arduino Nano ?

-mark

At 11:52 p.m. 20/10/2014, you wrote:
>On Mon 20 Oct 2014 22:11:24 NZDT +1300, Stuart Brown wrote:
>
>Thanks for the info!
>
> >  * Arduino Nano (no headers) -
> > 
> http://www.banggood.com/ATmega328P-Nano-V3-Controller-Board-Compatible-Arduino-p-940937.html
> >  * Arduino Nano (with headers and USB cable) -
> > 
> http://www.banggood.com/ATmega328P-Arduino-Compatible-Nano-V3-Improved-Version-With-USB-Cable-p-933647.html
>
>Warning: On both boards they replaced the highly reliable (and
>expensive) FTDI chip with some drivel. For the sake of saving $2 I
>wouldn't waste my time on it.


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