A brief overview of third-party Arduino-compatible boards

Because the Arduino ecosystem is so popular, there are many manufacturers of alternative boards that fill special niches that none of the official Arduino boards fills. Often, that means that these boards are cheaper, have special hardware, or use more powerful processors. The variety is large, and the space is quite dynamic, which makes it hard to curate a complete list of boards that you can use with the Arduino toolchain. But here is a small list to get you started in your search for alternative boards that might be just the right fit for your robot.

Adafruit Feather and Trinket M0

Adafruit is a maker and seller of a large variety of breakout boards for interesting components, and not only are their boards usually very well done, but they are also exceptionally well documented, complete with open source libraries and tutorials. Besides breakout boards for small components such as sensors, they also make development...