3 Simple Ways to
Share What You Make

With Instructables you can share what you make with the world — and tap into an ever-growing community of creative experts.

PhotosPhotos

Share one or more photos of a project, recipe, or whatever you've made, quickly and easily.

Step by StepStep-By-Step

Share your step-by-step photos with text instructions of what you made so others can do it too!

VideoVideo

Share your how-to video. You'll need your embed code from a video site such as YouTube.

Bare Bones Breadboard Arduino Labels

Bare Bones Breadboard Arduino Labels
This Instructable is really simple. I was inspired by tymm's uDuino bare bones interface for breadboarding an Arduino, but thought that one thing was missing. The Arduino pin descriptions, D0, D1, A0, A2, etc., don't match up directly with the ATMega168 or ATMega328's twenty-eight pins. The information for mapping the pins is easily available on the Arduino web site but I wanted something even simpler. My Instructable is a simple paper label that makes the translation of the pins simple.
 
Remove these adsRemove these ads by Signing Up
 

Step 1Make a spreadsheet

Make a spreadsheet
The first step was to create a spreadsheet. I used Open Office since it's available for Windows, Mac, and Linux and it's free for the downloading. Using Open Office, I created the spreadsheet ATMega168.ods.

The cells have to be really small. The rows are 0.1 inch high to match the 0.1 inch spacing of the ATMega 168 pins. By trial and error, I found that the smallest font I could use was 6 point Arial Narrow, and the column widths are 0.12 inches for the pin numbers (columns A, D; F, I; and K, N), and the pin labels can be 0.18 inches wide (columns B,C; G,H; and L,M). Once I made one chart, I just duplicated the chart several times so I didn't have to use one sheet of paper to print out one tiny label.

The asterisks by some of the pin labels, D3, D6, etc., indicate that these pins support pulse width modulation, PWM.

UPDATE: Users have reported trouble saving the Open Office .ods file.  It gets saved as a file with a .tmp file extention.  Instead, right click on the file and select Save File As, and enter the name you desire with a .ods file extension.

To save you the time of creating the chart, the Open Office spreadsheet, ATMega168.ods is attached. 


« Previous StepDownload PDFView All StepsNext Step »
27 comments
Apr 17, 2012. 7:26 PMnliwilson says:
Given the age of this article I'm probably not the first to do this but I used OpenOffice to save the document to PDF in order to make it easier and uploaded it, it should be attached to this comment. :)
Apr 20, 2012. 5:55 AMLakes57 says:
I tried this with open office (portable) to modify it to eight labels across, but the numbers on the sides display and print out as hashes, same thing happens if I export it a PDF.

Am I doing something wrong?
Apr 20, 2012. 6:45 AMnliwilson says:
Sounds like you don't have the appropriate font installed and you're getting hashes because OpenOffice is replacing characters it doesn't have. The original font used was Arial Narrow 6 point. :)
Apr 20, 2012. 11:53 AMLakes57 says:
I downloaded the font from here
http://ufonts.com/download/arial-narrow/22749.html

Had to drop the font size for the pin numbers to 5pt to fit into the 012" cell size.

The font in your pdf looks different which is maybe why it fits better.
Aug 11, 2010. 10:58 AMshaadmahmud says:
here is how u can make an usbasp.. http://must-info.blogspot.com/
Mar 20, 2012. 6:47 AMzmemw16 says:
link shows pornographic advert page, select the earlier blog entries
for link to programmer info link
Aug 5, 2011. 9:27 AMlyweilian says:
A good place to convert the ODS file to XLS for those that don't have Open Office installed. http://ofoct.com/ods-to-xls.html
Mar 1, 2010. 9:59 PMsf_hombre says:
What am I doing wrong?  When I go to download the file "atmega168.ods" I get FLLJZ8TFT7PLVL6.tmp instead.
Sep 26, 2010. 1:57 PMbhunter736 says:
I got the same thing, however I tried renaming the .tmp file to atmega168.ods and it opened without a problem.
May 20, 2010. 9:30 AMxl97 says:
Dont feel bad..I get the same as you...  can some PLEASE post the correct file in the CORRECT format? and maybe even in .xls?

thanks
Mar 24, 2010. 5:02 PMsf_hombre says:
OK.  Just changed the extension on the file to .ods and opened it with Calc.  However it looks like I'll have to futz with the side number size as they are not printing.
Mar 21, 2010. 1:37 PMsf_hombre says:
Hmmmm.  Here we are 3 weeks after my question below and no reply and no comments, and, as far as I can figure out, no way to contact the author of the original article.


Feb 25, 2010. 11:00 AMCalcProgrammer1 says:
Great Idea!  I have a growing collection of chips that I just use for breadboard stuff and don't plan on building into permanent designs, this would be a good way to speed up design (no constant looking at pin diagrams).  It's easy enough that you could make one for other common chips too (MAX232, shift registers, timers, other microcontrollers, etc).
Feb 19, 2010. 4:05 PMTOCO says:
is the atmega168 label the same as the atmega328?
Feb 21, 2010. 2:40 PMTOCO says:
thanks alot. that was what I thought but I wasnt shure.
Aug 25, 2009. 10:23 PMicecreamterror says:
Cunning! p.s use 0.1 mfd bypass capacitors to ground on the AVCC and VCC pins, that gives better noise filtering for the chip.
Jun 1, 2009. 11:45 PMjadler says:
Nice!

I found a similar, designed as a label to stick on top of the chip at Tod E. Kurt's site. He left out pin numbering, as I would too, but your spreadsheet approach is much easier to do from scratch or modify to personal needs.

My installation of OOo 3.0 on Ubuntu 9.04 AMD64 did not have the font you use, I had to change to Times New Roman 4.5 points in order to fit, but it is very hard to read after printing.
May 26, 2009. 3:54 AMhelloworld1 says:
if you do this to all your chips, how will you know which one is which?
Apr 12, 2009. 2:24 PMerio says:
Very nice idea! It could be used for any chip... I love it.
Apr 8, 2009. 8:41 AMBitty says:
Very nice. It's one of those things that's so obvious you kick yourself for not thinking of it sooner.
Apr 8, 2009. 5:23 AMinventivefiend says:
Rather ingenious. But could heat dissipation be a problem?
Apr 8, 2009. 6:03 AMzaketus says:
Temp. of the chip shouldn't vary, in normal use. So that label shouldn't affect on chip.
Apr 7, 2009. 11:50 PMGhostWolf says:
Oh, Nice one. Very clever. Me like. *thumbs up*
Apr 7, 2009. 11:31 PMBongmaster says:
nice and informative :)

Pro

Get More Out of Instructables

Already have an Account?

close

All Steps Viewing
View all steps of an Instructable on the same page when you're a Pro Member.

Upgrade to Pro today!
5
Followers
1
Author:dnhoshor