Hi I'm new to electronics. I've been reading a lot about the arduino and thought it would be a great place to start out. I'm planning to build my first arduino on a breadboard, but want to do it on the cheap. I noticed the most expensive part is the usb to serial break out board. Was wondering if it possible to program it using just a serial connection? I've looked at several tutorials on building them, and all of them use the usb break out boards. I'm a broke college student and can't spend too much on hobbies right now, so I was needing some help looking for cheap options. Any pointer or suggestions for a beginner are appreciated thanks.
If you have acces to a computer old enough to sport a parallel port:
Sweet, I do have a computer with a parallel port. Hopefully this will work with linux. Article says windows, but i refuse to put windows on any of my computers. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.
if you have a bootloader on the chip yea you can program it using serial, you just need a level converter
I am ordering a atmege328 with the boot loader preinstalled, so this would probably be a good option for me. Thanks so much.
Yes you can program it with a serial port or even a USB to serial convertor but you will need to make some modifications to the design.
I would suggest you build the Serial Com Arduino like this one on your breadboard http://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardSerialSingleSided
There is no reason why you couldn't use this with a usb to serial adapter if your PC doesn't have a COM port(because all that the FT232RL IC does is act as a USB to serial convertor).
Just be careful because the signal coming from a serial port runs at "RS 232" levels which means up to 24V. The transistors in the above circuit do the level shifting, a safer option would be to possibly use somethign like the MAX232 which you will need to go a do some research on.
I haven't tried doing it this way but in theory it should work.
I was needing some help looking for cheap options. Any pointer or suggestions for a beginner are appreciated thanks.
For a reality check, you can buy an arduino for $30 + postage. In the end you will probably spend much more than this building from scratch. Building from scratch will be a good learning process, but a lot of that learning will be finding out what doesn't work as expected, and the extra parts that will have to be purchased that you don't know about now. Been there, done that with similar projects.
Most of the parts I already own resisters, caps, breadboards, ect. Only things I've had to purchase was the atmega328, and clock crystal. I am very fortunate to have a large supply of electronic components at my disposal, but a lack of funds for anything I don't have on hand already. Thanks for the suggestion.