Compared to an Arduino, this is smaller, consumes less power and has a "standard" layout and costs about 1/3rd of an "official" Arduino. The downsides are that there's less memory and less cpu perf, there are less I/O pins, but a lot of (practical, non-beginner) projects don't need that many pins. A highlight would be hardware SPI and I2C support, which are communication protocols for small gadgets (the AVR chip in Arduino has I2C/SPI but you can't use it from Arduino code, you need to write C) and PWM (pulse width modulation) which is a pseudo-analog output signal used to control things like servos.
So what could it be used for? Get a bunch of sensors and actuators that communicate with SPI/I2C/PWM. Think about things like accelerometers, gyroscopes, proximity sensors, liquid crystal displays, motor controllers, servo motors. Now plug them together and build just about any gadget you can imagine.
It's better than an Arduino if you're short on space, weight or power consumption. Things like tiny flying machines or wearable gadgets.
If you're a beginner looking for your first microcontroller platform, the Arduino will probably be easier to approach.
So what could it be used for? Get a bunch of sensors and actuators that communicate with SPI/I2C/PWM. Think about things like accelerometers, gyroscopes, proximity sensors, liquid crystal displays, motor controllers, servo motors. Now plug them together and build just about any gadget you can imagine.
It's better than an Arduino if you're short on space, weight or power consumption. Things like tiny flying machines or wearable gadgets.
If you're a beginner looking for your first microcontroller platform, the Arduino will probably be easier to approach.