How to make your own Arduino board

If your are like me which I am guessing you are, then ever since you got into doing stuff with arduino you have wanted to make your own arduino board. You may be surprised to find out that making the prototyping board is actually very easy, and can have several advantages over using the commercially sold board. For one thing, All the components together cost a little over 15 US dollars as opposed to the $30 that the Uno board sells for. second, you may not actually want a board, but may simply want the atmega chip as the heart of the project, like if you are making a synthesizer or even a robot. In that case, you can just attach the  hardware necessary to use the chip, and solder to the pins you need to use without needing the board. Another advantage is making shields. You have probably noticed that digital pins 7 and 8 are not the standard distance apart, which makes it difficult to make your own custom shields without paying the $15 dollars for a protoshield every time you make one. But if you make your own board on perfboard, the headers will be the standard distance apart and you can make your own shields with ease. Also, you may need to permanently add the board to your project, and for that you may not want to use the more expensive arduino boards. This board however is half the price, and easy to add to custom projects.

The only down side is that some parts of the arduino are kind of hard to build on perfboard. Most notably the Serial to usb adapter chip, which allows the microcontroller to interface with the computer through usb. You could use a good old RS232 jack, but they are not on a lot of newer computers. So to program your homemade board you will either need a break out board which does have the chip (get one here: http://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product_10001_10001_2117341_-1), or an arduino Uno or clone board to program the chip ( I used the former.)

Either way it is a fun and informative project.

Step 1: Materials

All of these materials can be purchased as a bundle here (except for the power jack and female headers: http://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product_10001_10001_2151259_-1

  otherwise here is the parts list:
-perfboard
-two 10 uf electrolytic capacitors
-two 10 uf tantalum capacitors
-7805 voltage regulator (5v)
-LM1117T-3.3 voltage regulator(3.3v)
-green LED
-red LED
-two 150 ohm resistors
-10k resistor
-one 0.1 uf capacitor (ceramic disk)
-two 22 pf capacitors (ceramic disk)
-16 MHz crystal oscillator
-momentary push button switch
-jumper wires
-female headers (I used three rows of eight)
-row of 6 male headers
-female wall wart power jack
-ATmega328 with bootloader
-28 pin DIP IC socket

Comments

[jasshopper]

What if you don't have an arduino board to program it, any other ways?(i'm completely new to this so...)

[Higgs Boson]

FTDI breakout board connecting to the headers.

[jasshopper]

any way to make that? coz when i searched the web for it in india it costs more than my budget, so if yes any schematic or a site where i could get started?

[Higgs Boson]

Oh, and the breakout board, those are kind of tricky because of the chip they are based around, but you could probably do it if you want to. I am not sure where to find schematics. Google may know...

[Higgs Boson]

There are schematics on arduino.cc, but you'll have to disregard some of the things regarding the USB serial converter chip. Just focus on the connections vital to the ATmega328 (power, ground, clock, and of course the I/o pins). I should hopefully have a schematic upo soon, but I have been kind of busy with school lately.

[jasshopper]

I found a schematic pls check if it would work or not, and is there any thing special about the 4 LEDS (TX LED & RX LED...) in the schematic or would any leds work in its place? also what is that 'XB24 AUI 001', is it necessary?

[Higgs Boson]

You should be able to exclude the XB. interesting that you found a schematic including one though. Keep in mind though that the FT232R is only SMD, so it will be difficult, but not impossible, to solder (especially with perfboard). Good luck!

[jasshopper]

can you suggest a better way? like fixing it to a pcb of some kind and taking wires connected to each pin?

[Higgs Boson]

You'll sometimes see boards for sale that connect the SMD pins to headers to make it work like a DIP, but otherwise just soldering some thin wires (28 gauge or so) to each pin to make the connections should work okay.

[jasshopper]

I've made a schematic inspired from your's please check if it is correct and there is a blank in it please fill it.
thanks for all the help.

[jasshopper]

this is the schematic.

[jasshopper]

can you use this for making a led cube? and is there a better schematic?

[Higgs Boson]

Yes you can, and I am working on the schematic.

[dcárdenas5]

I know this is a stupid question, but I must ask if that Arduino Board can be programmed in the Arduino's software?

Thanks for the post :D

[Higgs Boson]

If you have an FTDI breakout board you can program with the arduino IDE. You may have to change the board settings though...

[ahmed21blr]

Appreciate all your hardwork and putting this post. If you could post an instructable including "how to boot load an raw atmega328 / 168 / 8" then its truly making your own arduino board. Cause the bootloader is what makes it an arduino. 

Good work.

[Higgs Boson]

Thanks. I will work on it, but that is something I am still in the process of learning how to do. There are a few things that I may try, But many people don't seem to consider it actually doing it myself. I'll keep experimenting and post something when I find something presentable.

[ahmed21blr]

Hey Higgs Boson,

Thats a good sign, Looking forward for your work. :)

[Tanmay Das]

Can I use an ATTiny45 in place of ATmega328. (my board has to be very thin)
Can I use the same components and connections or do I have to change it.
It is my first project with MCs, so the more help the better.

[Higgs Boson]

No. The ATtiny45 (and 85) is completely different from the ATmega. For starters, the ATmega328 has 28 pins. The ATtiny has 8. The ATmega has 20 I/O pins and the tiny has 5. The mega has a clock pin the tiny does not. The tiny also has a lot less flash and so cannot execute as complex or as long sketches as the mega. While the two of them are both atmel, and yes can both be programmed with the arduino IDE, they are worlds apart, and require much different hardware to operate. If you want to use a tiny look up ATtiny programming shields on this site and you will find many good instructables. Otherwise for this project you have to use an ATmega chip.

[Tanmay Das]

Thanks

[dparashar]

I don't see one set of headers in the picture. I am totally new so please forgive me if this is a stupid question:

Did you leave that set of headers on purpose?

[Higgs Boson]

The header pins are soldered on the side of the board opposite to the regulators. They are near the edge and kind of hard to see. Sorry about that.

[streetjerk]

kindly check the image attached . .. are the pins 7,8,20,22 proper ? is there a necessity for capacitor ? in the main site of arduino there's a mention of using a low pass filter . . . cnt undstand why.

Also do have a check at the voltage regulator ckt with the 3 capacitors.

[Higgs Boson]

The connections of pins everything should work out fine if you follow the connections on your schematic. The capacitor you mentioned is not necessary, but it would do no harm if you added it. The voltage regulator in your schematic has a very common setup. The capacitors help ensure the reliability of the regulator. The third whether you add the third capacitor or not will not make much of a difference.

[streetjerk]

and another question is that can i proceed with the project with an ATmega8 chip ? i have an arduino with atmega8 mounted on it. what i want is just reciprocate the basic board so that it looks handmade.

[Higgs Boson]

You could certainly try. It is pretty similar to the 328, but you may need to change some of your selections on the IDE to get it to work with the chip.

[streetjerk]

making a line follower with sensors detecting black/white surface and processing the analogue input is serial reading right ? Can i use your setup and process to make a line follower ? I have an arduino based line follower bt i want to make a line follower which wont be termed using a "pre-assembled development board".

[Higgs Boson]

Yes you can. And in fact I made one with an actual arduino board in another instructable which I am still making improvements to.

[skg1]

can i use an ATmega328p ??

[Higgs Boson]

you can use pretty much any ATmega328. They are all very similar some just require less power and stuff. Other than that they are essentially the same.

[DoctorWoo]

Following the trend of newbie questions, I have one of my own. I see you have a FTDI breakout board on here. I was looking to change a few parts of this design for another project, but in order to do this like I would like to have it, I would need to set it up so the USB plug is a permanent part of the board. Question is: can I hook up the FTDI breakout to this and now cause anything damage?

[Higgs Boson]

Sure. You could place the headers on the board the way you normally would for temporary FTDI connection to the board, and just glue the FTDI board down after connecting. You could also bypass the the female headers on the breakout board by soldering wires directly to the traces on the board. Neither would damage anything it would just make it difficult to use the FTDI on anything else.

[DoctorWoo]

Awesome to hear! Like I said, I plan to use this for a project of mine, and essentially make a permanently mounted ardunio inside a POV wand. I wouldn't need the headers and what not on a standard arduino, and have a way to interface with it to program the words. I have found a fairly cheap FTDI breakout for $7, so its not a huge drop for what I plan to do. Thanks for the answer!

[skg1]

I am a newbie
what if the ATmega328 is not with bootloader??
thanks..

[Higgs Boson]

You'd have to burn the bootloader with the arduino IDE. There are some other instructables that cover how exactly how to do this. I have heard that it can be long and complicated, but I have never actually tried it myself.

[buteman]

Great idea, something I just started designing 2 days ago so good to see your take on it.
I have a Uno and what I did was buy a 28 pin zif socket. I pulled the 328 out of my Uno and plugged the zif socket in it's place. Now I can just buy 328's with bootloader and drop them into the zif and program them.
I added a set of female headers to my Uno so can still plug shields into it if I want to.

[Higgs Boson]

Yeah I have been using my uno for programming too, as I haven't really been using this enough to need to buy the breakout board. That will probably change though. Good luck on your project!

[pratyush das]

I am a newbie ( I mean total newbie..I just bought an ATMEGA 168 today), now I want to make my own board , I was just going through your tutorial but I cannot understand how you interface it with a computer? I mean whats with this breakout board?
thanks in advance !

[Higgs Boson]

Well to get a bare chip such as the 168 or 328 to interface with a computer is kind of difficult. On a lot of older boards you'll see RS 232 connectors. These connectors made interfacing chips with the computer pretty easy, as all of the needed connections were pretty much all provided. But now it seems that RS 232 are pretty much obsolete, and to get a bare chip to interface via USB requires some extra hardware, most notably a serial to USB converter chip. The breakout board which I mentioned has the the serial to USB chip, as well as other necessary hardware already on it which allows you to interface the chip to the computer with USB via the ISCP headers using the breakout board.