In the ten years since Arduino was first released, there's been a huge proliferation of hundreds of different "Arduino boards" available. On one hand, there's an Arduino for just about every kind of specialized purpose, but on the other hand - it can get quite confusing!

In this tutorial we'll be focusing on the Arduino UNO which is the classic Arduino, by far the most popular and is what 99% of projects use. It's basic, well supported, and is a great starter-duino.

As you do more you will find that there may be other Arduino compatibles you could want!

For example the Arduino Mega is...well, Mega! Its a big sister to the UNO with a ton more memory and pins, and a different chip, the ATmega2560. It's a good upgrade when your project no longer fits in an UNO

The Arduino Micro, on the other hand...is a bit smaller! It has a different Atmega32u4 chip that can do native USB so it can act like a keyboard or mouse. Its slim and has downward-pin headers so you can plug it into a breadboard.

The Arduino MKR1000 is a little like an Arduino Micro but has a more powerful 32-bit ATSAM ARM chip and built-in WiFi! A great upgrade for when you want to do Internet of Things projects

There's also Arduino-compatibles like the Flora we make here at Adafruit. It's a round wearable Arduino and rather than use wires you can sew it into clothing for portable soft-electronic projects

And really, there are hundreds of others... once you start with the Arduino you can take it anywhere!

This guide was first published on Jul 14, 2016. It was last updated on Mar 08, 2024.

This page (Which Arduino?) was last updated on Jul 14, 2016.

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