Review on 🔌 Adafruit 5V 16MHz Metro Mini 328 by Keith Morris

This is 2016 updated version with CP2104 chip. It does everything the old FTDI Mini/Nano did and even better. This solves the problems that older nano knockoffs had with FTDI driver detection. Monitors the USB to serial port like any Arduino. It has the same form factor as Nano but 1 pin shorter. If you have an old nano breakout board, it's 100% compatible, but the labels are different. Don't forget to download and install (FTDI VCP driver by FTDI) and (SiLabs CP210x driver by SiLabs) for the COM/Serial port to display properly! Visit the Adafruit 2590 product webpage for links to drivers. By default my Windows 7 PC didn't automatically detect the correct drivers, I had to download them manually from the Adafruit website. Installing the drivers and starting the Mini took less than 5 minutes. Adafruit products just work and have great support and community forums. Their growing support community alone is worth any additional cost compared to Chinese competitors. Make sure you have the latest version of the Arduino IDE (currently 1.8.9) and connect to this board as an Arduino/Genuino Uno with an AVRISP mkII programmer. Some might not like that there are no soldered pins, but they come in separate packaging. For my project I like this as I don't have to desolder all the pins to make it smaller. Brilliant! There is a tool for every job and I hope they continue to make these boards. At the very least, this is a great way to turn fake Nano owners into a better Adafruit ecosystem.