The Arduino Nano 33 BLE Gets a Rev2 Refresh with Dual-IMU, Power Supply Upgrade, and More

The Arduino team has announced a new version of the Arduino Nano 33 BLE, unsurprisingly dubbed the Nano 33 BLE Rev2 — bringing with it a move to two distinct inertial measurement units (IMUs), new pads and test points, and a better power supply, all in the same footprint.

"The Nano 33 BLE is one of our most popular boards, and for good reason," the Arduino team claims of its design. "It's small and 3.3V-compatible; it comes with an embedded nine-axis IMU featuring accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer; it has a powerful processor; it offers a powerful Bluetooth Low Energy module with an internal antenna that can be used to transmit data between different devices using the ArduinoBLE library; and it can be programmed with MicroPython.

"So, why work on making it better? Because we listen to our community, that’s why."

The Arduino Nano 33 BLE Rev2 shares the same footprint as the original, though sketches written for the first revision will need a little tweaking to get up-and-running on the new variant owing to a handful of hardware changes. The biggest: a move to using two separate inertial measurement units, the Bosch Sensortec BMI270 six-axis IMU and BMM150 three-axis magnetometer, instead of a single nine-axis unit.

Another change, though not affecting sketches, is a shift to the Monolithic Power MP2322 step-down converter, which the Arduino team says will "guarantee increased performance" compared to the first revision's power circuitry. There's also a VUSB solder jumper on the board's top, which enables the VUSB pin, and new pads and test points for accessing USB, SWDIO, and SWCLCK signals. The board's processor, meanwhile, is unchanged: the Nordic Semi nRF52840, offering a 32-bit Arm Cortex-M4 core running at up to 64MHz, 256kB of static RAM (SRAM), and 1MB of flash storage.

"These updates collectively contribute to a more streamlined and robust device, ready for you to test and build just about any IoT [Internet of Things] project – and more," the Arduino team claims. "If you already know the Nano 33 BLE from its first revision, you can easily migrate your sketches to use them with the new and improved version."

The Arduino NAno 33 BLE Rev2 is now available to order on the Arduino store priced at $24.17 — or $26.92 to have the bundled pin headers pre-soldered.