In this article I will introduce you to an Arduino board specifically designed to miniaturize your projects. I am talking about Arduino Pro Mini. Its like uno shrunk in size. This board is specifically designed for projects that need small space. The board comes in two variants 3.3v 8Mhz and 5v 16Mhz. Both powered by ATmega 328. Although Arduino has discontinued the board, Clones are still being sold widely.
Board Specifications:
As I mentioned earlier, the board comes in two variants. Although both are powered by same microcontroller, they differ in terms of power consumption and clock speed.
| Board Type | 3.3v 8MHz | 5v 16MHz |
| Controller | ATmega 328 | Atmega 328 |
| Clock Speed | 8Mhz | 16MHz |
| Digital Pins | 14 | 14 |
| Analog Pins | 6 | 6 |
| Current | 40mA | 40mA |
Apart from that the boards have 32KB flash memory, 2KB SRAM and 1KB EEPROM
How to program ?
Now you might have noticed from the picture, unlike Uno there is no USB connector on this board to upload programs. This is to keep the board as tiny as possible. To program a Pro mini, we need a USB 2.0 to TTL module.
This module connects to the Pro Mini and uploads the code serially. There is another simple method of uploading sketches onto a pro mini without the TTL module, but that’s a topic for another article.
Why Use Pro Mini?
This question may arise in mind, why use a smaller board with less power and no onboard USB support. Well this board is designed for compact projects. It can be used in multiple projects like, weather station, wearable electronics, etc. Or even for micro robotics.
That’s all for this article, the main purpose of this was to introduce you guys to another cool board by Arduino. In next tutorial I will teach how you can program it and use it to make cool projects. If you have any doubts or questions feel free to ask in the comments. See you in next tutorial ?
