Arduino Nano

Arduino the brand

An open-source hardware and software company, project and user community, Arduino designs and manufactures microcontrollers. The idea behind Arduino was to create simple and low-cost tools that can be used by non-engineers to use for their own projects. Arduino boards have been used widely in robotics, embedded systems and other such projects.

This idea was realised by students in Italy. They felt the need for cheaper alternatives to what was available in the market for such products as students work on a budget when it comes to projects of this nature.

The Arduino Nano

A small versatile, breadboard-friendly microcontroller. It comes with an operating voltage of 5V, but can withstand an input voltage from 7 to 12V as well. Built with 14 digital pins, 8 analog pins, 2 reset pins and 6 power pins. Each of these digital and analog pins are multifunctional but can be configured as input or output pins.

For sensors they can act as input pins, but if driving something they can be used as output pins. This board also makes use of mini-USB instead of a standard USB connection. There is 32KB of storage, out of which 30KB can be used for storing code and 2KB is reserved for the bootloader. With 2KB of SRAM and 1KB of EEPROM for the running processes.

Arduino IDE is used as the software for writing, compiling and uploading the code in the Arduino boards. It is compatible with all their boards. Being an open-source code one can find many prewritten scripts to help them figure out their projects.

Comments

This board is similar to the other Arduino boards but is smaller which works well if the project one has in mind has size constraints. The Arduino community is quite large and there are many message boards one can turn to for help or guidance for their own projects.

The Arduino Nano is available for relatively low prices even in Pakistan.