I have just put together and ordered some parts to build a value for money robot that I will be demonstrating and getting the kids in my school robot club to build.
This is the chassis and this is the Nano (Are these copies?)
As I have never built a robot based on this type of Microprocessor I had a bit of a guess on power supply parts. The chassis comes with a 4 x AA battery holder to power the motors but I also ordered and was intending to use a PP3 9v battery to power the Nano by supplying 9v unregulated to pin 30?
Can anyone advise whether this is OK or should I power the Nano with the 4 x AA?
4AA nimh is enough for motors and the board, if gets heavy 6AA nimh. Get a l298 driver board and you are ready to go. You can probably save some £ by searching a bit more on banggood.
To power arduino you can put a regulator to the battery and feed it from usb, get 6AA and feed it directly from the battery, use a usb battery for cellphones. Alcalines go flat if you ask them too much current.
My first robot was based on that kit, and you can improve performance of the motors by soldering the wires to the motor ends. Batteries fixed under the board and arduino above, with a breadboard sticked on the chassis:)
That looks like a clone running on the ch340g chip. I’ve got one (well 3) of them, and they work perfectally well, but you’ll need the drivers (here).
also be warned, sometimes they come without a bootloader, so you may need a programer (arduino as isp if you have another arduino) to sort that. but its not a big issue, and once thats sorted, youre away