Boy, talk about bad quality control. I just finished building the Crazy Gear Clock PCB's I bought from you. Then went to program the nanos. Didn't know they were hit or miss after hours of frustration trying to figure out what I was doing wrong, trying different cables, trying different computers. Only to find out all along it was the nanos were bad. I ordered the 5 pack on Amazon and only 1 worked. The other 4 would not be seen on any com port no matter what computer I tried them on. And only then did I read all the BAD reviews on Amazon on what junk they are. I just ordered a bunch on AliExpress. I hope they won't give me as much trouble. I just thought once again this was going to be easy peasy. No such luck.
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It must be just that one vendor. I have built around 100 fully programmed kits and cannot recall a single Arduino Nano that was defective. There is sometimes a bit of fiddling to randomly switch between the old and new bootloader.
My sources include both Amazon and AliExpress. Amazon appears to have mostly 3rd party vendors shipping through Amazon warehouses. I try to stick vendors once I find one that I like. Two Amazon vendors I have used successfully are AITIAO and AITRIP. I have only ordered once from AliExpress and recall having to do the most fiddling. They were possibly a mixed batch using both bootloader types. Amazon has been much more consistent for me.
The only true known good supplier might be the official Arduino store. They now have 18 different flavors with "Nano" in the name. The oldest one is the one used in the clocks at US$24.90 and only available with a mini USB port. I think I will stick with the clones to get the USB C port. At some point, I should test the controller with some of the newer Arduino boards.