breaking out the rx tx indicators

Other Hardware Hardware Development
1

after following the instructions to burn a bootloader successfully at

http://www.instructables.com/id/Atmega-Standalone-Running-without-crystal-oscillat/?ALLSTEPS

i got to thinking i may consider developing a bootloader burning shield.

i looked at the schematic of the arduino uno r3 at

i found that the rx and tx indicators are directly connected to pins 10 and 11 of the atmega chip

unfortunately when i using my multimeter to verify that it turns out that the leds are not connected to the pins 10 and 11.

the reason i want to break out the pins is because most shields would cover the indicators witch is critical for verifying board response.

it is possible that i could drill holes into a blank shield board and install light pipes or some short piece of fiber optic string to bring the indicators to the top.

i would like to build a bootloader burner shield to make it easier to install boot loaders without all the complex wiring of a breadboard and then the possibility of corrupting or even burning out the chip or something bad.

thanks for the help

2

Look at the schematic once more. The LED's are connected to the Atmega16U2 (USB-converter) - and not the main 'Arduino'-IC.

You could extend the lights with light pipes or monitor the actual serial lines on Arduino pin 0 & 1 - You can do this with some transistors, resistors and LED's

// Per.