ArduinoISP Bootloader/Programmer Combination Shield

I started recently to get interested in building Arduino based robots. Since it is a traumatizing process to take any creation apart, I am opting to keep mine alive and kicking. To lower the cost of this strategy it seems obvious to switch from the arduino development board to selfbuilt arduinos - DIYduinos if you like - and keep the original arduino for what it is meant for... development. See for DIYduino examples the stripduino, the paperduino, the self-etched-arduino, the paperduino perfboard, the palm arduino, and the breadboarduino. There are more out there, I am sure. Just start looking. However, making the cheapest DIYduino requires buying ATMEGAs without bootloader. With those you need to load the bootloader and subsequently you can upload a sketch. This process can be done with a regular Arduino board and is described in a number of tutorials such as the ArduinoToBreadboard tutorial.
Here in this instructable, my first by the way, I am introducing you to a strip board arduino shield that allows you to load either (i) a bootloader or (ii) a sketch onto an ATMEGA using an Arduino board as the In-System Programmer (ISP) or as the USB to Serial interface, respectively. With this board all you need to do is set a few jumpers and temporarily remove the ATMEGAx28 from your original Arduino to switch from one to the other.

Step 1: What you need

The first picture shows all the parts that are needed for building the bootloader/programming shield:
1) Stripboard, 0.1" hole distance
2) Quick connect IC socket
3) 10kOhm resistor
4 ) 5x2 & 1x3 Pin male/male connector with short/long legs, 0.1" hole distance
5) 1x8 & 1x10 Pin male/male connector with long/long legs, 0.1" hole distance (this may differ with the type of original arduino you are using)
6) 2 Cables with female/female connector
7) 2x 22pF Ceramic capacitor
8) 1x 16MHz oscillating quartz
9) 4x Jumper from for example an old motherboard
10) Jumper wires of various lengths
11) 1x ATMEGA328 or 168 to be programmed

The second picture shows the hardware that I used to put it all together.
1) Solder iron & solder
2) Carpet knife
3) Hand saw with skinny blade
4) File - not too coarse
5) Wire cutters
6) Fine tipped pliers
7) Sharpie Markers of different colors and pencil
8) Third Hand (made by following instructable by rstraugh ...thanks)
9) Track Cutter (made by following instructable by scraptopower ...much obliged)
10) Voltmeter with test leads
11) Paper printout of strip board pattern
12) Arduino with USB to serial chip (e.g. Arduino Uno) for uploading the bootloader or DIYduino and for subbing in as a USBtoSerial programmer for uploading a sketch

Comments

[pfred2]

I see this it takes an Arduino to make an Arduino method a lot. It kind of makes me wonder how they made the first Arduino? Which came first, the Arduino, or the clone? Why did the Arduino cross the road? See you on the other side!

[Superbender]

Hi Unmitigatedaudacity,
I meant the statement as written. It is referring to the content of a thread that discussed difficulties with using an ArduinoUno as ArduinoISP. Thinking about it I assume that at the time of the thread Arduino1.0 may have been the latest software so they could only roll back. The authors there used Arduino0022 and Arduino0023.
I got it to work with Arduino0023 and Arduino1.0.1 so maybe just Arduino1.0 didn't work. Also the platform you use seems to be a factor, because my Mac and at least one person in another thread with a Mac did not run into these software problems.

[unmitigatedaudacity]

" use Arduino software version 0023 or earlier"
I assume you mean later, right?