Nano with Mega168PA

Official Hardware Nano Family Classic Nano
1

Hi all! First post here, despite following the forum for a long time.

Recently I bought a couple of Chinese Nano clones with 168PA in them for some small projects. All I need is to flash some LEDs, so I think the 168, having less RAM/FLASH/EEPROM but costing a bit less should not be a big problem at all and justify saving some money.

Just to be surprised that these Nanos is a bit slow to boot, taking +/- 2 seconds to start my sketch.

After a bit of fruitless googling, I would to ask you, experienced guys, if there is a better bootloader for these µC and if it's possible to burn it using another Arduino as ISP and, in this case, how to do it.

I think if I select, in the IDE, the Nano with Atmega168 as a target it will burn the same slow bootloader?

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If you use Arduino as ISP you can program the Nano with no bootloader, only the sketch.

But, did you test the bootloader behaviour with a simple sketch like Blink, instead of your code?

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Hi, @anon57585045, thanks for your repply!

Yes, I tested it with blink and have the same behavior.

I know I can use it without bootloader, but I would like to keep the possibility of upload new code through USB in the future, so my interest in trying another bootloader, if possible.

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There are other bootloaders out there. Have you Googled?

Have you tried uploading a sketch without a bootloader? Just to be sure there is no hardware problem on the boards? Such as a slow reset circuit...

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OK, I didn't test upload code without a bootloader.

And yes, I googled and read about OptiBoot, but I can't understand how to burn it instead of the one that is bundled with IDE.

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You can use an Arduino as a programmer and program another microcontroller. If you program only your program without a bootloader on the other microcontroller, then you have all the memory and your program starts faster.

7

install MCUDude's "Minicore", and use it's "burn bootloader" command (after setting the Board to ATmega168 and properly connecting/setting some sort of device programmer.)

(The oldest bootloaders do take several seconds to run the sketch after a reset or powerup.)

1 Like
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Hi, @westfw! Thank you for your suggestion! I didn't know about MiniCore and it was exactly what I was looking for!

I successfully burn its bootloader and achieved the instant boot keeping the possibility of sketch update using USB.

Fantastic work by MCUDude.

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