Arduino: Legitimate vs Clone

I recently bought two authentic Arduino boards: the Uno and the Leonardo.

After playing with these two units, I decided to start looking at cheap clones for a number of reasons:

1) If I mess up and fry a board, I'm out a few dollars instead of $25
2) I can build projects (like a rocket) with a cheap clone and not have to worry about the project blowing up, taking my Arduino with it
3) I can transfer a clone back and forth to school/work without worrying about damaging it since it's so cheap

Once I made the decision to purchase a clone, I started doing research, which led me to some interesting information and questions... and here I am to share all of that with you.

[bogdahn]

There is no fake, true, legitimate or whatever arduino. They are all real arduino because it's an open hardware

[-yeme-]

its kind of unfair to talk about "legitimate" and "clone" duinos since the whole point of the project is that its open source for anyone to manufacture, so long as its compatible its legitimate. just an unfortunate choice of words maybe.

[Uncle_Buzz]

Good call on telling people to purchase at least one real Arduino to support the community! Also, the bent pins aren't from shipping, they're because the components are hand soldered and they bend the pins over to hold the components in place when they flip the board over for soldering. It's quite common. In fact, I just disassembled 2 Bogen Power Amps and almost all of the thru-hole components are bent over for that same reason. Makes them a pain in the ass to recover discrete components sometimes because they don't just fall out when heated. I do like the hand-soldered stuff if it's well done though. And the black PCB is pretty cool too! Cheers, Chris

[bahadrbaserkok]

I promise I'll buy the legitimate with my first engineering money

[MithatKonar]

I have an older official Uno R3, and it too lacks the extra cap and resistor. It also doesn't have printed I/O labels on the headers.

[jbgmail]

the cap. is a desgarger, if voltage starts to get to high, or it (much like most power supplys, etc.) acts as a filter to filter the inconsistent voltage. it's one or the other

[broolympus]

I still buy Original Arduino's ( I don't know why)
I just Love Long lasting Original Arduino boards
Nice Vids by the way...

[DreamState]

Like the vid. I could not afford a Uno from Arduino but I did donate for the software so I am helping some.

[TinkeringNerd]

That's called filter capacitor to filter out some electrical noise.

[bruhdabones]

The mysterious resistor is on the VCC pin of the ATMega328p-pu. This means it is somehow directly related to the powering of the Arduino board.

[villatuyo]

that beautiful capacitor, is intended to avoid some kind of peak produced by the feeding of the use of the pin

[tandroid]

PWM is not pulse width management, it's pulse width modulation

[JerryEricsson]

I have an extensive collection of Arduino clones, that said, I do have one new one, a Due. I read up on it, and wonderof wonders, I could not find a clone of one, and after reading the specs, I just had to have one! I have found that the nano's are very reliable, but the pro mini's seem to die rather quickly, I have six of them and only one still works.

[ahoe]

stillborn86 "Pulse width modulation"

[wosbe]

hello, if resistor is 120 ohms, works as reset disable, and capacitor is 10uF, it works as serial reset disable. Search info about enable/disable reset and serial reset.

[armenatorvan]

The title for this video implies that clones are made illegally, this is not actually the case since the whole project is open source. As for the actual comparison, the Uno is really just an Atmel AVR plus voltage regulation and a serial chip. It's so simple you can make one yourself, so there's little reason a clone should be inferior unless the AVR or serial chips (see FTDIgate) themselves are counterfeit. Clones I have use the CH340 serial chip which doesn't have the FTDI problems.

[dfn]

I have clone too. It is like the legit board but only difference is those resistor and capasitor missing and color is just blue. On the other side the soldering quality is just like legit board too.

[MrSwanley]

On the subject of being nervous about blowing up your genuine Arduino - notice that the MCU is socketed, and that is the device that you are most likely to damage I think. Replacement ATMega328P DIP chips complete with Arduino bootloader are readily available on eBay.

[hannescamitz]

Too make an unqualified guess about the resistor without checking schematics of that particular resistor, but could it a pull up or down resistor for something?

[johnbarden]

@7:33 that is a bad solder joint for the ICSP on the authentic arduino.