How to Burn a Bootloader to Clone Arduino Nano 3.0

by Akin Yildiz

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Intro: How to Burn a Bootloader to Clone Arduino Nano 3.0

Hello everybody..

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I have recently purchased an Arduino Nano 3.0 Clone which came without a bootloader. I am sure there are many other people who are in the same situation as me, and may have freaked out a little bit at first ! Don't worry, in this instructable I will show you how to easily install a bootloader to your new clone.

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let's see how it's done..>

ATTENTION - some clones are different. they don't have an ftdi chip, which may cause your computer to not see the arduino once plugged in with the usb. if this is the case, please follow these steps; https://www.instructables.com/id/How-To-Burn-a-Boot... thanks to author Gegec for his help on noticing the problem and solving it as well :)

STEP 1: Get a Clone

It is very easy to find a clone of any board on the internet. Or you can at worst make yourself one...

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They are extremely cheap, I have seen pinless nano boards as low as $5 online. You just have to do some work on your end, which is a very fair give and take if you ask me.

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I don't want to advertise any names here, if you just search the board that you want with the word clone next to it, you will find some. Mine is called Funduino Nano, which is an open source company apparently just making amazing products at real fair prices..

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Look how small an arduino nano is, it's the size of my pinky finger. This will help me tremendously in my new projects, huge improvements on size!

STEP 2: Test It First !

Plug it to the computer with the USB cable.

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Make sure it turns on, and yes it did.! So far we are safe.

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Now try to upload the blink sketch to it using the Arduino software on your computer. (file>examples>basics>blink)

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You will most likely get the error in the second picture. This has nothing to do with the code being right/wrong. It just simply means that your computer and the board aren't communicating correctly, in our case the lack of the bootloader prevents us from doing so.

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If your clone did work with the sketch upload, then even better.! you found one that is pre-installed. just start using it...

If you get the error message, keep on reading..>

STEP 3: Simple Few Steps

Now you need to find a working arduino board, doesn't matter if it is a nano or not, I have used my "real" uno r3 and worked perfectly. If you don't already have one, try borrowing it from a friend.

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If you have any grab your female - male breadboard jumpers. These will make the process even faster and easier. BUT I didn't have any so, instead of waiting 2 weeks for them to arrive online as well, I had to take some extreme measures!

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First we need to locate and get familiar with the ICSP pins. On mine just one of them was marked with a number, top right as 1. Here is what they look like in the schematics. So right under 1 had to be 2 and next to one was 3 and so on...

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Now that you are ready lets begin - do the following steps in order;

STEP 1 - Upload ISP

-Connect the working arduino to your computer.

- Open the arduino software on the computer

- Go to Tools>Serial Port>COM (and make sure that the correct COM port is chosen - ask me if you don't what this means)

- Go to Tools>Board>Arduino Uno (in my case uno, this is the arduino that is already working not yet the other one)

- Go to File>Examples>Arduino ISP (a new sketch screen will open with the ISP code written in it)

- Verify then Upload (your board will start blinking for a bit, it means it is loading, wait until done uploading)

- Unplug the arduino. Now it has the ISP code in it, all we have left to do is connect them together and run a few commands again...

STEP 2 - Connect 2 arduinos together

- Now connect the two arduinos together, to do this without female-male jumper cables was time consuming, you have to be VERY CAREFUL and take your time bending the wires, other wise you may short your circuits. ask me first ! In the second picture you can see that first I put the ICSP pins through a piece of paper and then carefully wrapped around them the corresponding wires. Make sure they grab on very tightly, use a small flat head screw driver to bend them. Take your time, don't be rough.

- Connect them this way;

pin 1 on clone to D12 on working arduino

pin 2 on clone to 5V on working arduino

pin 3 on clone to D13 on working arduino

pin 4 on clone to D11 on working arduino

pin 5 on clone to D10 on working arduino

pin 6 on clone to GND on working arduino

STEP 3 - Burn Bootloader

- Keeping all the wires intact and unmoved in step 2, connect the working arduino back to the computer with the USB

- Go to Tools>Serial Port>COM (and make sure again that the correct COM port is chosen - ask me if you don't what this means)

- Go to Tools>Board>Arduino Nano w/Atmega 328 (this time we choose the non working arduino, in my case nano atmega 328)

- Go to Tools>Programmer>Arduino as ISP

- Go to Tools>Burn Bootloader (this is it, after the LEDs stop flashing your board is ready to use !!!)

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Do all of the above steps in ORDER !!! no skipping steps

Always make sure that the correct COMM port and correct board are chosen before uploading a sketch to avoid errors...

if you want to learn more or get a second opinion you can check this post (it's amazing) or just search on google " how to install a bootloader to arduino clone " and you will see many articles on this very topic.

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Remember to check out my other posts and subscribe to stay in the loop..!

love & peace

akin,

189 Comments

IvorP4 1 year ago

Hi Akin - I have followed the steps in this tutorial but get this error when trying to burn the bootloader: Arduino: 1.8.13 (Windows 10), Board: "Arduino Nano, ATmega328P"
Error while burning bootloader.
avrdude: Expected signature for ATmega328P is 1E 95 0F
Double check chip, or use -F to override this check.
It seems my Nano clones have a different chip - how do I find out what this is?

sky-fish 3 years ago

hi, the url in your text for greg Cs instructions on communication with nano seems to be recursive. it just returns this article, can you please fix the link? thanks

francy8278 3 years ago

after the final step the ide told me "error writing bootloader" and under "avrdude done. thank you." i don't understand what i done wrong

Babatz 3 years ago

Thank you so much! Just followed the instructions and got it to work!

jmlcintrano 3 years ago

I followed your steps and it worked the first time. You're a genius. Greetings.

robversteden 3 years ago

Thanks a lot for this relaxed manual. Happely I had an old original Uno (might be 8 years old or more with an enormous ATmega on board) and that did the job on four of my non-working nano's.

tompres 5 years ago

avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding

avrdude: initialization failed, rc=-1

Double check connections and try again, or use -F to override

this check.

thats the error im getting when trying to burn the boot loader from an arduino mega to an arduino nano

please help ;(

stratosfear2000 3 years ago

I've got exactly the same problem. For me it worked well after I had activated the option "show verbose output during: compilation" in File/Preferences.

ArentL 5 years ago

Thanks for the tutorial. Burning the bootloader was a piece of cake. "burning downloader succeeded". So I thought my problem was over trying to upload to my Nano gave the same error as it did before ( I checked port, board, and processor)

avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 10 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x0e

HELP!

Thanks in advance!

florian-hh 3 years ago

First: Thank you for the good tutorial! I got my nano up and running again.

@akin Now a question: I want to burn a custom bootloader to my nano using another nano or an uno. Do you have an idea how to do this? I want to burn either an Arduino Leonardo or a Sangaboard bootloader to my nano, refering to https://gitlab.com/bath_open_instrumentation_group...

FaridM13 3 years ago

this has help to fix my clone nano, it actually works, altho now when i load sketch reading it (fails but program now run, even complex ones that powers OLED and DHT, so based on that, i think it works) thx...

Shedrack Mkwepu 4 years ago

What happens if I upload the Arduino ISP code while I have already wired both programmer and slave? Will this interrupt the process?

dancopy 4 years ago

After doing the whole procedure as in the tutorial, shows this: "The selected serial port does not exist or your card is not connected."

But the card is plugged into the port: "COM11"

aketiramesh40 4 years ago

My nano aradino is not connected with my mobile but the power light and the L light is blinking please help me

KimR74 5 years ago

Nice work indeed! I got 4 Nano -clones, all born with the blink -sketch from factory, 3 of them unable to program at all, 1 of them allowed programming one time only. After following this tutorial, they are all up and running. Seems like the factory just program the blink -sketch direct in .hex, not thinking about bootloader and fusebits.
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