Hi Yoon & Alina,
While testing the Arduino Nano 33 BLE, I’ve discovered that communication with the board can be unreliable. Specifically, messages between the board and the connected Mac are sometimes truncated, meaning commands sent to the board (e.g. to change a pin’s state) can be lost. It doesn’t happen all the time, and it’s most apparent when you try to configure multiple pins at once (such as when using a word output channel). However, it’s very easy to induce with my standard Firmata tests.
This appears to be a known issue in the software stack for the board. There doesn’t seem to be any fix or workaround at present. While I expect the issue will be fixed eventually, I think the best course of action for now is to switch to a different board.
The most obvious choice for replacement board is the Arduino Nano 33 IoT. It has the same form factor and pinouts as the Nano 33 BLE, so it should work as a drop-in replacement. However, the IoT’s microcontroller and software stack are completely different from those of the BLE, so the BLE’s USB issue won’t affect it. In fact, the IoT uses the same type of processor as the Adafruit Feather M0 Bluefruit LE, which I’ve used for many years as an MWorks Firmata device via both USB-serial and Bluetooth.
Does this sound like a good plan to you? If so, I’ll ask Chris to order one Nano 33 IoT for me. Once I’ve tested it and confirmed that it works as expected, we can get more for the lab.
Thanks,
Chris