I've never had any interest in digital electronics but needed an Auduino for one particular job.
As this was likely to be a one-off I wasn't going to pay top dollar so got a cheap (less than three quid) Uno clone off e-bay.
This differs from a genuine one in a few minor ways. It doesn't have Tx and Rx LEDs or an LED connected to D13 that you can program. None of these mattered to me.
What did cause some head-scratching was the Arduino IDE software not working with it on Windows, though it did on Linux.
The problem turned out to be it having a different USB to serial converter chip, a CH341, for which an extra driver is needed. This can be downloaded from here. It's a ZIP file which includes an installation program.
As this was likely to be a one-off I wasn't going to pay top dollar so got a cheap (less than three quid) Uno clone off e-bay.
This differs from a genuine one in a few minor ways. It doesn't have Tx and Rx LEDs or an LED connected to D13 that you can program. None of these mattered to me.
What did cause some head-scratching was the Arduino IDE software not working with it on Windows, though it did on Linux.
The problem turned out to be it having a different USB to serial converter chip, a CH341, for which an extra driver is needed. This can be downloaded from here. It's a ZIP file which includes an installation program.