I decided to try making an Arduino Pro Mini at home. Being done, it's not worth it. You can buy one for a dollar more than you can make them, and it took awhile to populate. Although, it's "fun."
This projects was also a chance for me to test the Spying-Stalactite I built.
I've enjoyed it. It allows me to reflect on my strategy while populating boards. It's simply a drop down with some high-powered LEDs (~2500 lumen), heatsink, and coolant fan. It has a hole for my iphone to do the recording. Cheap and simple. Although, I need to diffuse the light, as you might see by the video that it washes out the details of the projects. Also, I'll add a few more lights and do away with the tungsten lamp, since the iphone is constantly in a white-balance battle as I move infront of the mixed lightsources.
I populated this board; everything came out fine (although, it was much more difficult trying not to block the camera with my head). I popped it into Atmel studio and it read out the device voltage and signature. Of course, I bricked it, as I seem to do a lot.
My next projects is a Fuse Doctor. :)
I had ordered the boards from OSHPark and had planned on making three. So, I populated another and took some time programming it. I've outlined my steps below:
Step #1: Hook up the AVRISP MKII
Step #2: Device Programming
Open Atmel Studio. Go to Tools -- Device Programming.
Step #3: Setup
- Tool: AVRISP mkII
- Device: ATmega328
- Interface: ISP
Click apply
Step #4: Check Device
Read Target voltage (it should be ~5V). Read Device Signature.
Open boards.txt that comes with Arduino (\Desktop\arduino-1.0.3\hardware\arduino\boards.txt).
Scroll down to the area marked:
Pull the programming information for the board from this area. Now, I've bricked a few boards, but I think I've figured this one out. When programming this board with the MKII and Atmel Studio, you should follow this order.
Step 5: Set the fuses:
- Extended:
0xFD - High:
0xDA - Low:
0xFF
Double check the board file to make sure I didn't make typos
Hit "Program"
Step #6: Upload Bootloader
The bootloader for the 5v, 16mhz Arduino Pro Mini (which is what I built) is ATmegaBOOT_168_atmega328.hex (Desktop\arduino-1.0.3\hardware\arduino\bootloaders\atmega\ATmegaBOOT_168_atmega328.hex.
It's important to note that the 3.3v and 5v versions use different bootloaders.
- Go to the Memories tab.
- Hit the browse ellipsis.
- Select the
ATmegaBOOT_168_atmega328.hex
Double check the board file to make sure I didn't make typos
Hit "Program"
Step #7: Set Lock Bits
Go to the "Lock bits" tab. Check the boards.txt file for Lockbit number.
Mine was:
- Lockbit:
0xCF
Upload the Blink Sketch; the LED by the reset button should blink.
Let me know how it went. If you bricked a chip using these instructions, let me know so I can modify them quick.
Now that I'm used to the camera and stalactite, I plan to annotate my next board for tips on working with 0402s.
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