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Review on ๐Ÿ”Œ Smallest Arduino Microcontroller Seeeduino XIAO - SAMD21 Based, Enriched Interfaces, Fully Compatible with Arduino IDE, Ideal for Projects Requiring Arduino Micro, 1pc by Dennis Wood

Revainrating 5 out of 5

Small and functional but not Linux friendly

All three that were in a set of three ran and they are fine. I've spent a lot of time trying to get it working on Linux (Mint) using the Arduino IDE with (almost) no success. I've tried flashing them about a dozen times and it only worked once. I suspect that something has been messed with the USB drivers. The only mention on the Seeed website about using Linux and the Arduino IDE for Xiao is a post on their blog that simply says "Run arduino-linux-setup.sh". I did this and it seemed to improve the USB responses in the syslog when I plugged in the board. However, it only worked once. Set it up in Windows and it worked great every time. Then I'll try the Arduino CLI, but based on my experience with the GUI IDE, I don't think the CLI version will work as well. I haven't spent many hours working with them, but they seem like a good choice when you need something REALLY small and just need to make a few external connections. You should also be aware that storage on them is limited. The vaunted "flashing" sketch we've all run millions of times takes up 13% of available memory. Again, this shouldn't be a problem since you won't be powering eight motors and connecting 12 sensors to one of them.

Pros
  • Easy setup
Cons
  • Disappear