#298 Four new Arduino Nano Boards: Test and Comparison (Every, 33 IoT, 33 BLE, 33 BLE Sense)

Recently, Arduino released four new products. They all look very similar but use completely different Microcontroller chips. So we have to answer two questions: Do they know what they are doing and is it any good for us Makers? And of course: How do they compare with the ESP32?
In this video, we will look at these four boards:
- Arduino Nano Every
- Arduino Nano 33 IoT
- Arduino Nano 33 BLE
- Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense
And look into the following topics:
- An overview of their capabilities. We will also add a typical ESP32 board for reference
- We will have a look into how the Arduino IDE supports a multi-CPU Architecture environment
- We will look at the new 3.3-volt world and the dangers coming from this change
- Will find out bad things about the boards if they exist
- We will test the BLE and Wi-Fi functions and measure power consumption
- And we will try to answer the essential questions: What are the implications for the future of the Arduino platform. And: Is there a new star born?

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[Webshadow]

Thank you for keeping the Summaries 🤩 they are so very useful on these long Videos 👍👍👍

[dcpowered]

I've been waiting for this video about the new Nanos since months! I'm glad you're finally giving some attention to the new Arduinos. Please make more videos about them!!

[ernstgreiner]

A rework of the overloaded boards-menu would be highly appreciated.

[tonysfun]

I learn something new every time I see your videos! You are a great teacher Andreas who pays attention to details. Thank you again Andreas!

[andrewkieran]

Andreas, thank you for retaining the summary/recap at the end of the video.

[GnuReligion]

I keep 3.3V and 3.6V zener diodes on hand to limit voltage to the 3.3V side of communications.
A small 100/68 ohm resistor is placed on the 5V side, then a zener to ground directly after.

[isaacatia-abugbilla]

Thank you for the video. I was really having a hard time grasping the schematics of these new boards as I am building my own board based of the NINA-B3 family of chips. This video helped clarify plenty of things. Thank you once again

[Devinm]

Thanks for explaining in great detail. I'm still new to micro controller boards, this stuff is fascinating!

[chuxxsss]

I wonder if the Bluetooth is fast enough to pass real time Audio through the i2c bus. Good episode Andreas. Have a wonderful week mate.

[StopBugging]

I'd just like to suggest PlarformIO as an alternative to the Arduino IDE. I use it with VSCode, but it can be used with other IDEs/Editors, too. It comes with a library manager and allows multiple configurations for different boards in the same project. And most important for me: Using VSCode gives you reasonable code navigation and completion features.

[bobashby]

Pin names on the underside PCB. Thinking of your blood pressure, don't forget to reverse the order for a mirror image template! Obvious maybe but easily overlooked.

[MaxDiscere]

Sehr interessantes Video 🥰 so wie alle deine Videos

[tilllemmer]

Great video as always!
I would be very interested in how the energy consumption of the Nano 33 IoT board turns out in deepsleep mode, also in comparison with ESP32 boards.

[maseratiolli]

The high BLE current is due to:
1. The chip probably has the 8dbm Amplifier turned on
2. It never seems to go back to standby mode

I get the chip itself to work on average 85uA with a 100ms Update rate.

[Gengh]

Excellent video, I have only 1 criticism, I would have loved to see the ADC characteristics in the table you showed for comparison, keep up the great work.

[esafonov]

Thank you for a great update on all this new Arduinos.

[SzymonJakubiak]

What I like about about this product line is that Arduino went back to their well established Nano form factor. It seems that MKR form factor didn't got as much popularity as Feather from Adafruit, but Nano can be a good alternative for projects not intended for battery operation.
Moreover, Nano BLE is first Arduino board capable of running CircuitPython, although some additional work and tool is needed to flash it with different bootloader.

[oleeide]

Thanks again Andreas, for a useful and interesting video to watch having my Sunday breakfast. I look forward to the future videos that I guess is gone be more inn depth about the connected boards.
I have a few questions to you:
Now with the new NRF52840 based BLE boards, do you know if there is some mesh networking capabilities using Arduino with these boards ?
Have you looked in to the mesh capabilities of the ESP8266 an ESP32 boards, if not that would be a really really interesting and useful video especial with an MQTT gateway, connecting meshed sensors and devices to the "cload" ?



/Ole

[connecticutaggie]

Thanks for continuing with the summaries at the end.
They are useful and interesting - as was the rest of the video.
Bye.

[louiscelenza]

Thank you thank you thank you! You answered many questions I had with your side by side comparisons. You are very helpful and brilliant.