I want to have a standalone ATmega328 on a breadboard, program it with Arduino IDE, and supply it with less than 5 volts. I know this drops the chips speed grade but will that prevent me from using the Arduino IDE on it? On a sidenote, what is AVR studio?
Not at all. From the Tools > Board menu, I might choose "Arduino Pro or Pro Mini (3.3V, 8MHz) w/ATmega328". Using an ICSP programmer or the ArduinoISP sketch, burn that bootloader to it, be sure you have an 8MHz crystal or resonator connected, and that should do the trick. You can also add your own boards to the boards.txt file to support specific configurations. For example, I have added an entry to use the internal oscillator at 8MHz. AVR Studio is Atmel's development environment, it can be downloaded from their web site. Haven't tried it personally, but it's on my bucket list XD
Great! Will I have to use different capacitors for an 8 MHZ crystal or should the ones used in the tutorial (follow the link above) work i.e. does the capacitor rating vary with different crystals?
No, same caps.
As far as burning the bootloader to the breadboard bound ATmega 328, can I use an Arduino Mega 2560 or does it have to be an Arduino Uno (or one of the other models which use an ATmega 328)?
Good question! I would think that since the SPI pins are used for the bootloading that the Mega2560 would work. The bootload sketch gets re-compiled for the processor you are downloading to, so I should think it would work.
Where are you from jkarimi? I know some Karimi's in the Boston area.
Oh, and AVR Studio is Atmel's development environment.
Works with the AVR ISP MKii for programming
http://store.atmel.com/PartDetail.aspx?q=p:10500054;c:100115
Great way to quickly check lock bits, fuses, program bootloader, etc. especially when AVRDUDE is having problems in the IDE.
You can also use the AVR ISP MKii within the IDE.
No I'm not from Boston haha, I live in Southern California