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@cadxdr@weirder.earth It's worth noting that, since Arduino is open-source hardware, the board files and schematics are freely available, so many of the clones are actually electrically identical to the original, just with some different logos on the silkscreen and stuff. In general they should be about the same as an official one and will work with all the official arduino software and stuff.
-F
@cadxdr@weirder.earth Also, I forget who makes it (Digilent maybe?), but there's also at least one arduino clone out there that costs more, but is ruggedized with extra protection on everything so that you can't really break it unless you're actually trying to break it. Since it costs more, it's not what you want now, but it might be good for if you figure out you definitely want to do stuff with it, but you aren't confident enough yet that you won't break it.
-F