DIY Sanguino

Forum 2005-2010 (read only) General Bar Sport
1

Well, if any of you know me, you'll know I'm cheap, but I like my technology :).

I was looking into the Sanguino because it has more I/O pins than my Duemilanove and RBBB, and it's relatively inexpensive. The only problem I face, is that I found the ATmega644P on digikey for $8.19, as opposed to the $27 + shipping MD has it for.

I have most of the other required components (headers, sockets, resistors, etc.), and I figure I could purchase the other stuff I need (crystal/oscillator, 7805, etc.) from digikey as well :).

I would then assemble it all on stripboard and have my own little Gheetoduino644 ;D!

What I wanted to know is: How difficult is it to burn a bootloader? I know it's supposed to be relatively straight forward, but I have a knack for over complicating things. I was planning on using the parallel programming method (the cheapest ;)) using a cable from eBay (4 bucks) and resistors I already have.

Does anyone have any insight into the matter? :slight_smile:

2

my "insight" is the fewer pins on my standard issue dip 328 is more of an excuse to push stuff onto external hardware, via the available buses

but i like hardware more than software

3

Maybe I'm just being slow, but I have no idea what you just said ;D!

And yes, English IS my first language ;D!

4

I use the AVRISPMKII to burn the bootloader on my boards.
I use the standard Sanguino bootloader and just modify the CPU speed
since I use a slower crystal.

I have a few notes at Loading...
See the "Sanguino" link.

(* jcl *)

www: http://www.wiblocks.com
twitter: http://twitter.com/wiblocks
blog: http://luciani.org

5

Assuming your already have some form of arduino, you can use IT to program the bootloader into other AVR chips, using something like the "boot cloner" (Arduino Playground - Boot-Cloner) (The boot cloner page seems to date back the ATmega8, so it probably needs a bit updating...)

6

Interesting, westfw!

Would that still work with "modern" ATmegas? Obviously I'd need to change the bootloader data and the fuse settings, among other things.

7

You can get a 644P with a bootloader on it + socket and crystal and caps for $11 here:
http://www.wulfden.org/TheShoppe/freeduino/rbfk.shtml

(RBFK644)

8

I WAS planning to pop the 644 out of my sanguino and drop it on a breadboard because the sanguino is so wide it covers up all the traces and is hard to connect to.

BUT I just noticed yesterday that the sanguino software only seems to be up to version 12 of the arduino IDE!

9

The Sanguino stuff still works fine. I just copied it all to Arduino 18 after a bit of messing around trying to decide how it would fit into the new directory structure (I'm using linux) and everything appears to be ok.

One issue I did find but not investigate yet, so I am not 100% certain, is that until the program fuses are set to use the external crystal, the programming speed for the bootloader has to be slowed right down to a fraction of the internal clock speed. I couldn't upload the bootloader from the Arduino ide so I used AVR Studio with a slow programming speed and it worked first time.