Hi,
Just a shorthand on 2 topics for those who have chosen the same board: first use of the board and the notorious Avrdude error.
The board uses a virtual serial port chip connected to the usb port. Somewhat different than the usual AVR chip on a standard UNO.
So for programming the board one needs to install a driver. For Windows (8+/10) that’s the CP210x USB to UART Bridge Conroller.
The latest version can be downloaded from Silicon Laboratories (silabs.com/products/mcu/Pages/USBtoUARTBridgeVCPDrivers.aspx)
When I powered-up the board for the first time, led-13 kept blinking rapidly. When I tried to upload a simple example sketch with the Arduino IDE, I ended up with the mysterious Avrdude errror: ‘avrdude stk500 getsync() : not in sync resp = ###’. I found a lot of posts on this error, but not one of them explained the root cause or came up with a working solution. Some posts stated that using another board layout for compiling solved the problem, but that didn’t work for me.
I finally had to burn a new boat loader. Fortunately I had a spare UNO that could be used as programmer. At Sparkfun (learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/installing-an-arduino-bootloader) one can find a very good instruction on how to do this. After burning a new UNO bootloader, the board functioned well and is now fully in use.
My suggestion for those who encounter the same problem: 'don’t search for answers on the error, but burn a boot loader right away. It’ll take you only minutes (connecting the ISP wires, load the prorammer example sketch and hit burn boot loader in the tools menu) .
Enjoy!