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Comment by herbst | Hacker News Reader

Cool. Now i can buy the cheap offbrand clones from Aliexpress without thinking i should have supported the actual creators.

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Any recommendations?

I bought like 2 of them so far and they both were exactly as expected. The only thing to note is that you should try to find those with CPUs (are those CPUs?) similar to the ones from the original designs. Some (the super cheap ones, < $1) often are identical by design but come with some crappy CPU

I think they're technically microcontrollers, which are actually a microprocessor and then some (RAM, ROM, ADC, etc) all on the same chip.

yes, thats the word i was looking for i think :)

Almost all the ones I've seen have used the atmega328P. You might see some slightly different models with different amounts of ROM and RAM, but most people would probably never notice the difference. If you need more than a few KB of RAM/ROM, you should probably be getting something STM32 based instead.

What does change is the Serial > USB converters that they use. The more expensive ones (>£3) tend to use FTDI chips, whereas the cheap ones use a CH340G or a similar part.

On some platforms you may have to install drivers to make these cheaper converters work, but they were just plug-and-play for me on Linux.

> If you need more than a few KB of RAM/ROM, you should probably be getting something STM32 based instead.

Which might not be a bad idea anyways. The Arduino framework's been ported to STM32 (stm32duino.com), and you can get a board and programmer for under $10.

Any of them, I've been using everything from teensy,nano, and rebranded Uno. So far they have all worked like a charm and at a steep price reduction. Example, 5 nanos for $15 from Amazon [1].

[1] - https://www.amazon.com/XCSOURCE-ATmega328P-Controller-Arduin...

Yeah, I've not really had a problem with off-label Arduino chips/boards whenever I've ordered them either, except for one being DOA and another having an I/O pin that just wasn't connected somewhere along the way inside the microcontroller.

Robotdyn is a great vendor. Their stuff is well built (and designed), not as cheap as the other aliexpress stuff, but far cheaper than the name brand.

FastTech have some called "Arduino Compatible" they are indistinguishable from the original ones except for the text on them. I suspect they come from the same factory.

From the product page:

    Q3. Are these actually original Arduino's, then? 
    A3. We can only officially answer we don't know.

Cheeky ...

My recommendation is a bit different, instead of that, try looking for a local manufacturer and support them.

Here in Brazil, people go for the cheap aliexpress clones to the point where some of our own manufacturers are closing shop. In these cases, strengthening the local ecosystem might be interesting and wiser in the long run.

Why? Your manufacturers could focus on something more profitable. What's the point in making another Arduino like board? Supporting non innovative shops is not good in short and long run.

It is like China and the shanzai spirit, first you clone then and make it sustainable then you innovate... (this is my personal opinion, I may be wrong).

I believe that supporting local non innovative shops is better than having no local shops at all.

But this is a result of that country politics. You should rather press government to make it possible to compete with Chinese (by for example lowering taxes, lessening the amount of bureaucracy - I heard this is a nightmare in Brazil). Throwing money at economy that is full of flaws will just delay the agony and not solve anything.

Hum... I've never seen a Brazilian Arduino clone. Didn't even expect it to exist.

Where can I get one?

There are many clones. Check out "mateduino"[2] which is made in the south of Brazil and also the one from robocore which is made in the southeast. There are others. The ones from robocore are great[1].

[1]: https://www.robocore.net/modules.php?name=GR_LojaVirtual&pro... [2]: https://matehackers.org/mateduino

Yep. I have no qualms paying $3.50 for a near-identical product that normally costs $27+tax. I'll take 10 please!

Open source projects push our development capabilities forward, and price competition is just another way it does this.

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