I've had some experience using Arduino Uno, but now tried to use Mini for the first time, and have gotten stuck.
I planned to use the Uno to program the Mini, so I hooked up 5V, GND, TX, RX and Reset to the Uno (plugging TX->TX and RX->RX, not crossing), and a led to pin 13. The only difference from the setup on the ArduinoMini page was that I did not remove the chip from the Uno.
After trying to upload a sketch, the led blinked, as if it was resetting, but the board failed do work (I tried uploading Blink first). After several more tries, it worked, but then trying to upload a different sketch failed again.
Any ideas? Do I need to remove the chip from Uno for the board to work as a programmer for the Mini?
(It's probably something obvious, and I'll look like a real noob
Mostly because I'm lazy and laso because I was afraid to break it.
But is solved it now. I was sure it was somethign simple, and it was just a classic case of not reading carefully enough. I forgot to reset the board shortly before uploading, as the mini doesn't auto-reset for uploads. Silly me!
I was playing with it a lot last night. Yes, in order to program it easily you need to remove the chip from the Uno. With the chip still in, I think there is some interference from the Uno while the Mini is being programmed, although I can be completely wrong.
Nevertheless it works, and I even managed to get the Mini and Uno working with a VirtualWire link. Hurrah!