COMPARING ARDUINO (UNO, NANO & PRO MINI) – arduino-tutorials.net
The Uno Nano and Pro Mini in this video Im, going to explain the differences between these boards and when to use which board in your projects. The first one is the Arduino Uno. It runs at 16Mhz and has 6 analog inputs, 0 outputs and 14 digital inputoutputs. It has 6 PWM ports which are for Pulse Width, Modulation, and these are indicated with this tilda or dash. It has 32K of flash and uses a USB 2.0 B port. As you can see over here, This port is also used on printers, so you might have a printer cable laying around, which fits in this socket. A nice advantage of the Uno is that it has a wide variety of shields to expand the functionality of this Uno. Im going to show you some of these shields, I have three different shields here: an Ethernet shield, a joystick shield from Funduino and a sensor shield. The nice thing is that when I have my Arduino, the shield fits inside all these pin headers. So when I press them together, I now have expanded my Arduino Uno with an SD card reader and an Ethernet port. You can do the same with this joystick or sensor shield. There are tremendous amount of shields in the market. For example, you have shields with an LCD screen or touch screen or motor drivers. This gives the Uno the unique function of expandability, with just clicking an expansion shield on top of your Arduino Uno.
This is the Arduino Nano, as you can see its quite a smaller Arduino. It also runs at 60Mhz, but has 8 analog in thats 2, more than the Arduino Uno. Also, it has 22 digital inputoutputs instead of the 14 of Uno. It also has 32K of flash, but instead of using the USB 2.0 B port, it has the USB 2.0 mini over here. The nice thing is that you can use this Arduino Nano as a mouse or keyboard, so you can create your own buttons to trigger actions on your computer. Its tiny form factor allows you to use this Arduino on your breadboard. You can directly stick it into your breadboard and can use it to connect your projects directly on the breadboard. Instead of all the wiring going to the ports of the Arduino Uno, The Arduino Uno has these shields, but, as you can see, because of the different form factors, these shields will not fit on the Arduino Nano. The nice thing is that our converter shields available where you plug in your Arduino Nano, and these are larger shields, so they can actually work with the other expansion shields. The last one is the Arduino Pro Mini. There are two different versions available: a 3.3V version which runs at 8Mhz, a 5V version which runs at 16Mhz. It has 6 analog pins, which is significantly less than the Nano, but the same as the Uno. It has 14 digital io ports, which is the same as the Uno 32K of flash, but no USB port.
You need an external programmer. I have a programmer over here. As you can see, it has an USB and a connector for these four pins. When you connect these together, it actually works as a normal Arduino. You connect this to your computer and you can program the Arduino Pro Mini. A disadvantage of this is that you always need an external programmer. An advantage is that this is a very small Arduino and it consumes less power than the Nano or the UNO. When you buy this Arduino Pro Mini often the pins are not soldered. When I soldered the pins, I made a tiny mistake, as you can see over here, these L pins are soldered upside down. I should have soldered them over here. This is important because, when you put this Arduino Pro Mini on your breadboard, it doesnt fit. As you can see, the pins are blocking these pins to fit into the breadboard. If I had soldered them upside down, it shouldnt be a problem, so I can recommend you, when you solder, your own Arduino Pro Mini to make these angled header pins to be on the top instead of the bottom. So we have three different Arduinos discussed, but which ones should you pick for your next project? Well, actually it depends.. If you are a beginner and you want to take advantage of the easy expendability of the Arduino go for the Uno, you can buy a lot of shields and with a single click, you expand the functionality of your Arduino.
If you are looking for an Arduino which easily fits into your breadboard and has the most inputoutputs of these three, you also have the Arduino Mega, which has even more inputoutputs. Then I should recommend to use the Nano. If power, consumption and form factor is really important to your project, then you should consider the Arduino Pro Mini. My personal preference is the Arduino Nano because it is small and fits into my breadboard and its a lot easier to work with than the Uno when youre not using these expansion shields. I hope youve enjoyed this video if you have any questions, leave them in the comment section and Ill try to answer them as soon as possible.