Sometimes you certainly had to work to an Arduino project having a small space for it… in that case the Arduino Pro Mini can help!
When I published my BTSwitch project, some wrote me asking informations about the board I used and expressing doubts about the ease of use.
The board is named Arduino Pro Mini and it’s an official Arduino product (not a clone!) manufactured by SparkFun:
Heart of the board is the famous ATMega328 microcontroller running at 16MHz; the same is used in many Arduino boards like 2009, Uno…
On the board are also present a voltage regulator, that allow to power the board with voltages up to 12V, and some status leds, as well as the reset button.
Arduino Mini Pro does not include also the components needed for the USB connection: you need to use an external adapter. If you choose a pin-compatible one (like the official USBSerial) the connection is straightforward:
The official IDE of course supports this board:
Effective is also the choice of the form factor of the board: 12 PINs each side and it fits in the IC sockets:
If you’re not convinced yet that Arduino Pro Mini is a great choice for your next project, consider also that it costs less than 10 euros 😉