Hi, I want to use the Adafruit ATMEGA Bootloader Shield (A DIY kit that lets you burn the arduino boot loader on a blank ATMEGA Chip) to create standalone projects after prototyping them.
My plan is to burn the bootloader onto these chips using this DIY Shield, and then just pop out the ATMEGA 328 that is on the Arduino Uno and insert the freshly burned ATMEGA 328, program it as if nothing happened, then run it on a breadboard, or PCB standalone Arduino, without having to buy and FTDI Cable, or anything like that.
My questions are:
Would I be able to upload the sketches to the freshly burned ATMEGA 328 with the method I proposed above?
Would I need an FTDI Cable/Friend to program it? (If the answer to the question above is no.)
Is there a better, more cost effective way to accomplish what I am trying to do?
Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions, and I hope you have a great time hacking!
You can do that, to program the just burned Atmega chip placed in the Arduino 28-pin socket.
Then you can put the chip in your standalone circuit (don't forget crystal, capacitors and 10k reset pullup).
BUT, whenever you want to modify the sketch, you have to retreive the chip from the standalone circuit and put it again on the Arduino, then reprogram and put it back. This can take some time if you are testing your sketch. That's why some standalone circuits do have a FTDI bridge, to reprogram without removing the Atmega.
Anyway there's another option to reprogram the Atmega without removing it, you can put an ISP conector in your standalone circuit, so whenever you want to upload a sketch, you attach your Arduino UNO to the ISP conector, and upload the sketch as an ISP-programer.