Seeeduino Film and Motion Capture

Step 3: Programming Film

You can use a wide variety of programmers to use with the Seeeduino.  I found that  FTDI breakouts sold by Adafruit and Sparkfun work well, as they already have female headers ready for jumper wires or male headers.  If you decide to use these you will have to be a little careful. First make you are using a 3.3V FTDI  breakout.  The pin outs of the FTDI breakouts from Adafruit and Sparkfun have an extra pin (CTS) and the pin outs don't match the order of the Seeeduino Film. You can still use them to program, just make sure that GND goes to GND, VCC->VCC, RX->TX, TX->RX and DTR->RST

Alternatively, you could use the UartSBee, also made by the Seeeduino crew.  This is also an FTDI breakout with two exta features: it serves as an XBee programmer and breakout with female sockets, and you can set the output voltage with a flick of the switch (3.3V and 5V).  This board correctly reflects the pin outs of the Seeeduino Film.  If you use the UartSBee make sure to set the output voltage to 3.3V.

I have used 3.3V Sparkfun FTDI breakouts and the UartSBee to program my Film boards and found no difference.  First, insert your wires into your breadboard, and double- or even triple-check that you know which pins map.  Next, line up your programmer and insert it into the breadboard.   After powering your programmer, hit the sleep button on the film and the Film's LED should blink! Your film is now ready to be programmed!  Load up Arduino and set Board type to Arduino Pro or Pro Mini (3.3V, 8MHz) w/ATmega168.