Arduino has shrunk the UNO R4 with the Arduino Nano R4 board equipped with the same 48 MHz Renesas RA4M1 32-bit Arm Cortex-M4F microcontroller, but offered in a much more compact form factor.
It’s closer to the UNO R4 Minima in terms of functionality, since it lacks the ESP32 wireless module and LED matrix found in the UNO R4 WiFi board. The new Nano R4 still features a USB-C port, an I2C Qwiic connector, and two 15-pin GPIO headers with castellated holes for expansion.
Arduino Nano R4 specifications:
- Microcontroller – Renesas RA4M1 Arm Cortex-M4F MCU @ 48 MHz with 32KB SRAM, 256KB flash, 8KB EEPROM
- USB – 1 x USB Type-C port for power and programming
- Expansion
- 2x 15-pin GPIO headers
- 21x digital I/Os
- Analog
- 8x 14-bit analog input pins, 1x Op Amp using A1, A2, and A3 pins
- 12-bit analog DAC
- 6x PWM
- 1x UART, 1x I2C (5V), 1x SPI
- 1x CAN Bus
- I/O Voltage – 5V
- DC Current per I/O pin – 8 mA
- Qwiic I2C (3.3V) connector for expansion modules.
- 2x 15-pin GPIO headers
- Misc
- Reset button
- Power and user LEDs
- RTC built into the RA4M1 MCU
- Input voltage
- 5V via USB-C port
- 6 to 21V via Vin pin
- Dimensions – 45 x 18 mm
- Certifications – CE, FCC, RCM, IC, UKCA, VCCI, RoHS
The Nano R4 board is compatible with Arduino tools and libraries, and sketches made for the Arduino UNO R4 Minima, although you’d still need to adjust those to align with the new board’s pinout. The full technical details can be found on the documentation website. This includes hardware specifications, Altium Designer hardware design files, recommended libraries, a getting started guide, and a tutorial to create a motor anomaly detection demo relying on Edge Impulse.
We’ve written about other small RA4M1 boards compatible with Arduino UNO R4 Mini, such as the Waveshare RA4M1-Zero, WeAct RA4M1, and Seeed Studio XIAO RA4M1, but the Arduino Nano R4 remains relatively affordable, and you’d support the company behind the Arduino IDE.
Two SKUs are offered for the Arduino Nano R4: ABX00143 with headers ideal for breadboard projects ($13.30) and ABX00142 without headers ($12.10) to solder the board to a larger baseboard or space-constrained projects. You’ll find both on the Arduino store along with compatible modules.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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$12 for that?? Please people, don’t drink the Arduino Kool-Aid.
Yeah they have been massively overpriced right from the start compared to what the hardware actually costs. It really shows when you can get dev boards from China actually designed by the store (not generic clone boards like the blue pill) with far more capable chips for much cheaper. Looking at the portenta H7, you can get the nucleo board for a similar chip for much cheaper and that’s not even that cheap compared to some of the similar dev boards you can get that also have H7 chips.
Talking about the R4 line, they aren’t too badly priced but an Arm M4 at 48 MHz on a basic Arduino uno board is ridiculous when you can get a Arm M7 at 550 MHz for half the price from Weact.
Also I can’t be the only one that hates the Arduino uno layout and how it has become so prevalent on all kinds of dev boards
You can also get a board with the same chip as this and the other R4 boards from Weact for half the price and a better form factor.