Arduino on a Breadboard

Intro: Arduino on a Breadboard

In the words of Make Magazine, the Arduino is an "immensely powerful microcontroller board that has taken the world by storm."
It offers the power of a traditional microcontroller while tremendously simplifying the programming process, making complex electronics projects easier than ever to design. Click here and here to learn more.

Several months ago, I built my own version of the legendary Arduino.

Here's what I used:

-ATMega328 microcontroller (with Arduino bootloader pre-installed)
-Silicon Labs USB-to-TTL converter
-16 Mhz crystal
-Green LED
-Jumper wires
-Solderless breadboard

To build your own Arduino, you'll need to install the Arduino software (found here) on your computer, as well as the drivers for the USB-TTL converter (found here). For more detailed instructions, please see Dale Wheat's article in Make Magazine, issue 25.

Enjoy!

Comments

[prappo.prince]

Can i use bluetooth module here ?

[electronicz]

Do you have a schematic for the circuit? Thanks

[ThatCaliforniaGuy]

I simply added the 16Mhz crystal between pins 9 and 10, no capacitors whatsoever.

It works fine for me, even without capacitors; the various wires and the metal strips inside the breadboard all contribute small amounts of capacitance. Besides, there were no instructions to add external capacitors when I read the article in Make, so the design must be somewhat reliable.

[Lyron]

Crystal without capacitors? THIS IS MADNESS! No serious, how would it work?

[soshimo]

It will work but most likely be very unstable. There is some trace capacitance between the wires and the breadboard strips but probably nowhere near the 20-30pF range normally used with crystals. It works, barely, but I would not recommend this design. The ATMega does support an external crystal without capacitance but it's optimized for 32.768Khz for the internal oscillator.

[astroboy907]

I've done this for 4 or 5 projects (without caps) and they seem to work fine so far...