So, I recently purchased a Atmega 328 online. I am still waiting for it in the mail,. and I am wondering what the difference between the one in the photo (the one I ordered) and the Arduino boards such as the Uno, that you can get that use the Atmega 328 board. Does it have the same capabilities? What are its limits compared to the Uno/other boards??
lindhoutd:
So, I recently purchased a Atmega 328 online. I am still waiting for it in the mail,. and I am wondering what the difference between the one in the photo (the one I ordered) and the Arduino boards such as the Uno, that you can get that use the Atmega 328 board. Does it have the same capabilities? What are its limits compared to the Uno/other boards??
It has extra A7 and A8 (see your photo).
It probably doesn't have a 3.3V output pin.
It looks like the big difference is that your board doesn't have USB. It's designed to use an external "FTDI cable", rather than having the USB/Serial conversion built-in. That could be a bad thing if you don't have a USB/"TTL Serial" cable of some kind; one of the big advantages of Arduino (IMO) was that it would just plug into a modern computer...
westfw:
It looks like the big difference is that your board doesn't have USB. It's designed to use an external "FTDI cable", rather than having the USB/Serial conversion built-in.
That too. I hope you ordered an FTDI programmer at the same time...
You ordered a generic clone mini. These are available in 2 flavors, a 5 Volt 16MHz version (the most common) and a 3.3 Volt 8MHz version. Broadly based upon the design by Sparkfun:
The first thing you will need to decide upon ordering receiving your module is whether you will utilize the male header pins... which almost always you will need to solder yourself. This is a one-time decision, since unsoldering the pin headers is really not recommended (but can be done.)
Most hobbyists use these in tight places: inside models (trains, airplanes, quadcopters, boats) and I use them for LCD backpacks and sometimes entire projects on the LCD backpack. At under $3 delivered, they are ideal for leaving in the project as recycling the boards generally require unsoldering and resoldering which eventually causes the copper clad to become detached from the board.
Ray
It has extra A7 and A8 (see your photo).
That is A6, not A8, a bit blurry though.
I am going to order a USB to UATR adapter for it, which will come with a cable to connect to the pins (See photo from original post).
The extra A6 & A7 are analog inputs only.
Meaning? And the person I bought it from said that he used this. (in link)
Meaning A6 & A7 cannot be used as digital I/O pins - only as analog inputs.
That adaptor in the link WILL work though correct? Sorry, I just don't want to wreck anything..
That one will work. You will have to manually press Reset as the adapter does not bring the DTR pin to a header pin.
This one brings DTR out to pulse the Reset pin.
http://www.tinyosshop.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=600
If you want the sketch to upload to the board through the adapter AND you want to do this without having to press Reset when you upload, you will need a USB-TTL adapter similar to the one CrossRoads linked... pressing Reset at the precise moment is not hard, but it does take some experience to get the timing correct which for some folks involves some anxiety until they get it down.
Ray
Some CP2102 boards make it easy to break out a DTR signal. The board linked to is not one of them.
The board linked to is not one of them.
That's always been my luck on these cheap things and half-the-time the pictures on eBay are not really representative of what is received.
I finally just decided to use the cheap USB adapters primarily for project to PC and power... If I really need bi-directional USB, the 32U4 (Leonardo'ish) boards do just fine.
You'll never appreciate the easy of hitting the timing sweet-point on downloading using the Press Reset technique until you try your hand at trying to hit the sweet point on a Trinket download! OMG... frustration on steroids XD
Ray