Today I downloaded the arduino compiler and it asked for a financial donation. I know there is the community arduino (genuino outside the US) and the Italian arduino which is a single person. How can I ensure that my donations and business only go with the community? If a board is from Europe and has the word arduino on it with the community logo is that the one to avoid?
Wikipedia seems to suggest the two competing companies were merged in 2016.
I managed to miss that obvious update. Sorry.......
They can be. I have all sorts and never had a problem, but I've avoided the absolute rock bottom cheapest Chinese ones. Since it's all OSH... I always work in Windows so I've not had a problem with the clones that use the CH-whatever USB chip, they've all just worked. Some of the Nanos I have look a little dodgy in the assembly and soldering department, but I guess I can't expect much when I paid less for each of those than I can get an ATMega328 bare chip for. So far every one from the 10 pack I bought has worked - it was a more expensive one that had a bad solder joint on a capacitor which I only made worse in an attempt to repair - SMD and my poor vision do not mix, lighted magnifier and microscope included. I really don't know what I am going to do with 10 Nanos, other than, at a cost of about 1USD each, not worry about accidentally frying a pin or two while prototyping things.
I bought 12 Arduino approved boards from a well known USA company a few years ago to try and avoid any quality problems, and 50% of them failed within a few weeks with a faulty oscillator. If the quality control checks don't go right back to the component suppliers the name on the board counts for nothing.
