First Stand Alone Arduino Project - Blinking LEDs!

Forum 2005-2010 (read only) General Exhibition
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This is my first project where I created my own board for the µC to live on. It's an ATmega168 with the regular Arduino bootloader on it.

I have to admit, it's pretty cool to hold a finished PCB in your hands that you designed. :slight_smile:

http://www.fischco.org/blog/2010/4/11/uits-circuit-people-it-works.html

Based on our Department Logo:

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Have you pre-programmed the chip?
and if you have how did you programm it :-/

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Of course, the way you routed the pseudo-traces is the best part. :slight_smile:

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Have you pre-programmed the chip?
and if you have how did you programm it :-/

I did program the chip before hand. I can pop the chip out of the socket. I have a breadboard set up that I can drop the chip into, and hook up an FTDI cable to it to program.

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That is pretty cool! I find designing pcb quite hard. I'm still struggling with my first pcb design. Hope I get it done before the end of the spring semester. So did you use eagle and where did you get your boards made? (couldn't quite make the name from your video)

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I did use eagle to design the board. Its interface is .. challenging, but I did eventually figure it out. Sparkfun has a great intro to eagle that I found helpful:

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/tutorial_info.php?tutorials_id=108
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/tutorial_info.php?tutorials_id=109

I had the boards made through BatchPCB.com. If you only want 1 or 2 small boards made, I found them pretty reasonable in terms of price. It took about 3 weeks for me to get my boards back, so if you need something really quick its not the best route.

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Thanks! I'm watching some online tutorials on youtube. They're all nice but not being an EE major, I have a hard time even finding the right resistor :(. I want to use the resistors and capacitors you use, what numbers are they? The whole list of components is intimidating. Thanks.

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The correct values for your project will probably be different than mine. :slight_smile:

I'm far from an EE, most of the component values I've used have been copying from other projects or trial and error. For this project, the resistors in front of the LEDs are 220[ch937] resistors, and the decoupling capacitor on the chip is a 0.1µF cap. There's also a 10k[ch937] pulldown resistor for the button.

I finally put the schematic and eagle files online:

Eagle Files: http://www.fischco.org/storage/arduino/UITS%20Circuit%20People%20Mega8.zip

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Thanks estranged. The file can't be downloaded. Would you consider reposting it? Thanks again. BTW, I found out the regular resistors I bought for breadboarding is probably R_US_0207/10. Did you use this resistor or something else?

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Woops, didn't realize the file couldn't be downloaded off-site. I changed it so try again.