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Real or Clone - Nano survivability, any real difference?

 

OK, since neither ones' choice of motor oils nor the odds on the Eagles vs. Cowboys are controversial enough, here's one:?? Have any of my fellow uBitx / Bitx40/20? owners experienced a different life span or robust survival rate between US$22 authentic Arduino processors over their cheap-as-dirt clones out of the Far East?

I've been burning through these things lately.? Once or twice had to do with being stupid with voltage levels or power connections; fair enough.? Other instances have been from who-knows-what, just the result of working of things way too late into the morning without remembering to shut off the 12-v feed to the box or similar reasons.? Then, there is what happened yesterday.? I set up a field radio (the Zombie Apocalypse HF Survival Kit) complete with uBitx-in-a-box, antenna strung up about 3 metres away via RG174 cable to a tree another ~19 metres away, and running off of embedded 4v Li-Po cordless drill battery cells (9 total, series/parallel).? RX was fantastic and the embedded ($11 Chinese) manual tuner did it's job on all bands & was hardly if at all necessary on 40m.? The 4w reduced CW went out just fine.? When I went to a voice band segment and tried the mike, obvious RF intrusion occurred and I had to shut it down to get a CPU reset. The most noticeable symptom was that the Nextion screen showed up the green-ish function mask as if I'd pressed in the Function button.?

This condition appears to be a permanent one.? That is to say that I can turn on the rig and listen until the cows come home but can't transmit in any format without the same thing happening again. Another symptom is that when I press the function button as if to switch bands or set tuning steps, the TX relay closes.? It's as if pressing the PTT or pressing the function now create the same error.

Given that I most certainly didn't re-wire anything just prior to this error, I've got ANOTHER three cheap clones in the mail and also have name-brand ("Arduino") board on the way.? Would the class care to comment upon their own, direct experience using the real thing vs. clones?? Yeah, I get that a thousand users have never burned up their clones and that the cheap boards "should" do the same job..... has anyone noticed the opposite in terms of RF damage, in their journey along the home-build path?

Thanks for your observations.


-Ted
?K3RTA
 

Some of the Nano failures reported here can be attributed to not enough protection on the IO pins.
For example, a couple pins going out to a keyer may as well be protected from static discharge with series 1k resistors.
Raduino should have protection against reverse power.
RF could conceivably get into some of these wires and zap an IO pin, though I tend to doubt that unless very long.

I had one of my stock Nano's go south, though it could well have been something I said.
Several reports in the forum of stock Nano's working out of the box, but sucking far more power than they should.
Suggests to me a Nano clone manufacturer with a quick go/no-go test, but not much more in the way of quality control.

When mine blew I then bought three from Elegoo at over $4 each, no troubles with them.
Expensive!? Well not really, but there are Nano's on Ebay for down around $2.
Those $2 ebay boards have little pressure to maintain quality control,
all they need to do is get their board a nickle cheaper and ship something that vaguely works.
Seems likely that some would be built using somebody else's reject parts.?
Elegoo has a name to defend, they get good reviews, and likely monitor their sources closely for trouble.
At least, that's my theory.?
Seems worth a few bucks to (slightly?) reduce my odds of spending a day tearing at my hair.
What little hair (and time) I have is well worth $5.?

I have yet to spend big bucks on a genuine Arduino Nano.
Jack Purdum, W8TEE has bought far more Nano clones than I, from a variety of sources.
And apparently has mostly good luck with them, as I recall.
Maybe he will speak up here.

Jerry
Jack Purdum
 

Hi Jerry:

There's no doubt that "real" Arduino boards rarely have any problems when used and are of better quality than the clones. I used nothing but the real thing for years. Somewhere along the line I started trying the clones...

I've been pretty lucky with the clones. The biggest problem I've had is the non-standard drivers. However, in most cases, downloading/installing the CH340 device driver fixes that problem. More recently, I thought I was seeing the driver problem again, but even installing the CH340 didn't fix it. Turns out some of the clone manufacturers are using an ancient bootloader that is confused by the recent versions of the IDE. Fortunately, it's easily solved. Use the menu sequence Tools --> Processor: "ATmega328p" --> ATmega328P (Old Bootloader) and do another compile/upload sequence and that should take care of it.

At times, I do feel guilty that I'm no longer using the "real" Arduino controllers. I try to make up for this by making a small donation every time I download a new release of the IDE. I think that probably more than makes up for the small profit they might have made had I purchased the real thing. I hope so. I also hope everyone else does make some kind of donation from time-to-time. Now, if they want to integrate a full symbolic debugger....

Jack, W8TEE


On Thursday, April 4, 2019, 7:00:31 PM EDT, Jerry Gaffke via Groups.Io <jgaffke@...> wrote:


Some of the Nano failures reported here can be attributed to not enough protection on the IO pins.
For example, a couple pins going out to a keyer may as well be protected from static discharge with series 1k resistors.
Raduino should have protection against reverse power.
RF could conceivably get into some of these wires and zap an IO pin, though I tend to doubt that unless very long.

I had one of my stock Nano's go south, though it could well have been something I said.
Several reports in the forum of stock Nano's working out of the box, but sucking far more power than they should.
Suggests to me a Nano clone manufacturer with a quick go/no-go test, but not much more in the way of quality control.

When mine blew I then bought three from Elegoo at over $4 each, no troubles with them.
Expensive!? Well not really, but there are Nano's on Ebay for down around $2.
Those $2 ebay boards have little pressure to maintain quality control,
all they need to do is get their board a nickle cheaper and ship something that vaguely works.
Seems likely that some would be built using somebody else's reject parts.?
Elegoo has a name to defend, they get good reviews, and likely monitor their sources closely for trouble.
At least, that's my theory.?
Seems worth a few bucks to (slightly?) reduce my odds of spending a day tearing at my hair.
What little hair (and time) I have is well worth $5.?

I have yet to spend big bucks on a genuine Arduino Nano.
Jack Purdum, W8TEE has bought far more Nano clones than I, from a variety of sources.
And apparently has mostly good luck with them, as I recall.
Maybe he will speak up here.

Jerry

 

I have always put small toroids in line with the ptt and mic. I assume that have had rf on the circuits on half of the bitx radios. Normally run 1:1 swr. Don't know whether any of them have come with genuine arduinos. Might be good to have the arduino socketed and to have some spare arduinos pre programmed. Keep it in bottom of the safe or other metal cabinet.
 

The host computer needs to know how to talk to the USB-to-UART chip on the Nano.
This chip converts USB traffic from your host computer (perhaps during a firmware download)
into UART transmit and receive wires for the ATMega328P processor chip.
The two wire UART interface is a standard that's been around for 50 years, and much simpler than USB.
A number of issues here:

The original Arduino Nano uses an FTDI chip for that USB interface, a MicroSoft Windows (MsWin) host computer
will require the download of a software driver from FTDI so it knows how to talk to that chip.
The FTDI chip was wildly successful, and some overseas manufacturers started selling cheap clones of the chip.
FTDI responded by adjusting their driver to detect these clones, and can brick devices using a counterfeit chip.
Something to be aware of when buying really cheap boards that claim to have an FTDI USB-to-UART chip.

The FTDI chip costs four or five bucks, to sell a complete Nano clone at $2 on ebay they need to use some other chip.
Most of them use the CH340 chip, which is what the Nano clones from hfsignals are using.
The CH340 chip requires a different software driver to be downloaded and installed if using MsWin.

Another popular USB-to-UART chip is the SiLabs CP2102, some Nano clones use this chip.
Again, requires a different software driver to be downloaded if using MsWin.

I'm running my Arduino software for Nano program development and firmware downloads under Ubuntu linux.
Everything pretty much just works, all the drivers are included in the default Ubuntu package (must configure permissions).
You can also run the Arduino software under linux on a $30 RaspberryPi3 if having trouble with your regular computer.

Some in the forum are running the Arduino software under MacOS.
Possible, but can be very tough to get MacOS to talk to some of these USB-to-UART chips.

When no host computer is plugged into the USB port on the Nano, the USB-to-UART chip is sleeping.
It is possible to drive the UART TX and RX lines on the Nano from some other off-board USB-to-UART chip.
This might be handy if you have trouble with talking to a CH340 chip on your Nano from MacOS, for example.

The Arduino organization has kindly made their software and the design for these boards open source.
So Nano clones are legit, though they are successful largely through the hard work of the Arduino guys.
As Jack suggests, it's good for all of us to help Arduino pay the bills when we can.

The bootloader issue that Jack points out is not something I've encountered,?
but good to be aware of.

Jerry, KE7ER


On Thu, Apr 4, 2019 at 08:04 PM, Jack Purdum wrote:
I've been pretty lucky with the clones. The biggest problem I've had is the non-standard drivers. However, in most cases, downloading/installing the CH340 device driver fixes that problem. More recently, I thought I was seeing the driver problem again, but even installing the CH340 didn't fix it. Turns out some of the clone manufacturers are using an ancient bootloader that is confused by the recent versions of the IDE. Fortunately, it's easily solved. Use the menu sequence Tools --> Processor: "ATmega328p" --> ATmega328P (Old Bootloader) and do another compile/upload sequence and that should take care of it.
?
 

I'm sure that's all fine and well, though, what is the impact of all of this upon parasitic RF and locking up the radio due to failure from an overabundance of electrons from the wrong direction?? Have you all had some Nano clones burn up with high VSWR and then found other clones more resilient to errors in the field?


Ted
K3RTA



On Fri, Apr 5, 2019 at 10:30, Jerry Gaffke via Groups.Io
<jgaffke@...> wrote:
The host computer needs to know how to talk to the USB-to-UART chip on the Nano.
This chip converts USB traffic from your host computer (perhaps during a firmware download)
into UART transmit and receive wires for the ATMega328P processor chip.
The two wire UART interface is a standard that's been around for 50 years, and much simpler than USB.
A number of issues here:

The original Arduino Nano uses an FTDI chip for that USB interface, a MicroSoft Windows (MsWin) host computer
will require the download of a software driver from FTDI so it knows how to talk to that chip.
The FTDI chip was wildly successful, and some overseas manufacturers started selling cheap clones of the chip.
FTDI responded by adjusting their driver to detect these clones, and can brick devices using a counterfeit chip.
Something to be aware of when buying really cheap boards that claim to have an FTDI USB-to-UART chip.

The FTDI chip costs four or five bucks, to sell a complete Nano clone at $2 on ebay they need to use some other chip.
Most of them use the CH340 chip, which is what the Nano clones from hfsignals are using.
The CH340 chip requires a different software driver to be downloaded and installed if using MsWin.

Another popular USB-to-UART chip is the SiLabs CP2102, some Nano clones use this chip.
Again, requires a different software driver to be downloaded if using MsWin.

I'm running my Arduino software for Nano program development and firmware downloads under Ubuntu linux.
Everything pretty much just works, all the drivers are included in the default Ubuntu package (must configure permissions).
You can also run the Arduino software under linux on a $30 RaspberryPi3 if having trouble with your regular computer.

Some in the forum are running the Arduino software under MacOS.
Possible, but can be very tough to get MacOS to talk to some of these USB-to-UART chips.

When no host computer is plugged into the USB port on the Nano, the USB-to-UART chip is sleeping.
It is possible to drive the UART TX and RX lines on the Nano from some other off-board USB-to-UART chip.
This might be handy if you have trouble with talking to a CH340 chip on your Nano from MacOS, for example.

The Arduino organization has kindly made their software and the design for these boards open source.
So Nano clones are legit, though they are successful largely through the hard work of the Arduino guys.
As Jack suggests, it's good for all of us to help Arduino pay the bills when we can.

The bootloader issue that Jack points out is not something I've encountered,?
but good to be aware of.

Jerry, KE7ER


On Thu, Apr 4, 2019 at 08:04 PM, Jack Purdum wrote:
I've been pretty lucky with the clones. The biggest problem I've had is the non-standard drivers. However, in most cases, downloading/installing the CH340 device driver fixes that problem. More recently, I thought I was seeing the driver problem again, but even installing the CH340 didn't fix it. Turns out some of the clone manufacturers are using an ancient bootloader that is confused by the recent versions of the IDE. Fortunately, it's easily solved. Use the menu sequence Tools --> Processor: "ATmega328p" --> ATmega328P (Old Bootloader) and do another compile/upload sequence and that should take care of it.
?
 

A marginal ATMega382P swept up off some factory floor might?
have IO cells that are more sensitive to RF than a good chip.??
I suppose.
Such a chip is likely to have some other failure modes that would pop up first.

Anyways, in answer to your question:? No,? I haven't.


On Fri, Apr 5, 2019 at 09:28 AM, Ted wrote:
I'm sure that's all fine and well, though, what is the impact of all of this upon parasitic RF and locking up the radio due to failure from an overabundance of electrons from the wrong direction?? Have you all had some Nano clones burn up with high VSWR and then found other clones more resilient to errors in the field?
?
Nigel G4ZAL
 

I've encountered several recent clone?V3.0?Nano's with old bootloader pre-installed.? As Jack said, you can overcome it in the newer IDE.
If you have a USBasp programmer, you can easily flash the newest bootloader onto the Nano via the 6 ICSP pins - I don't even solder them in, rather just insert them attached to the USBasp cable (with 10 pin to 6 pin adapter) and hold them over to make a firm contact for the few seconds it takes to flash the new bootloader.? Ebay has the USBasp+cable+adapter all for a few bucks.

Nigel - G4ZAL

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