So, I finally got around to getting my boarduino set up today, and everything went flawlessly. I used arduinoISP to burn a bootloader to an atmega328, and it worked fine. However, whenever I want to program it I have to switch out the ATmega chips and stick the boarduino one in my duemillanove. Is there any program I can load to my duemillanove that will allow me to load programs to my boarduino over serial or something? I don't want to risk damaging the connections by constantly switching out the chips.
I'm sorry if the answer to this is well known or obvious, I'm pretty new to the more complex arduino stuff.
thanks!
You could get a serial to USB cable...
Agreed. They make them, but you can make your own fairly cheaply.
Here's how I made mine for my RBBB from Modern Device:
In the Arduino 0018 software, look under the File/Examples tab for the second program in the list: ArduinoISP. It is a sketch to turn your Arduino into an AVRISP Programmer using the following pins:
10: slave reset
11: MOSI
12: MISO
13: SCK
It has all the directions and shows what to hook up in the top of the sketch.
I have not used it yet as I don't have anything to program at the moment. Could someone step in and let us know if it works or not and how good? :-?
Dan
The idea was to not spend any extra cash, EG use the other duemillanover instead of a USB to serial cable. Also, the ArduinoISP that photo-worx mentioned is what I used to burn the bootloader to the blank ATmega chip. I don't think that it can send programs to the arduino. And it worked just fine to burn the bootloader, FYI.
Indeed ArduinoISP does work very well for burning bootloaders (I've done it).
I've had a similar discussion on another thread, but here goes again:
In essence, ArduinoISP simply burns a HEX file directly to the chip (replacing the bootloader). If you can reprogram the system to burn a HEX file of your choosing, you can burn that using the same method. It isn't the same as using the IDE (the chip doesn't have a bootloader!), but it would work. There is probably a way to program it via a similar method (whilst retaining the bootloader), but I haven't seen any public code.
@TchnclFl
I just read your earlier post, I missed it for some reason. I think I may have to go with that cheap serial cable. However, I have a couple questions: First off, is it difficult to use in terms of software? Can I just plug it in, and plug the serial pins and gnd into the arduino and have it pop up in the serial port list of the arduino program, just like a USB arduino? Or do I have to jump through a bunch of hoops? Also, do you think I could kill two birds with one stone and use this thing to program picaxe microcontrollers?
Also, I have a mac if that matters.
thanks!
I just bought a ca-42 data cable. It turns out it uses a chipset that has a decent driver for mac apparently, as it uses the PL2303 chipset (theoretically). I'm gonna try this with my boarduino as soon as it arrives (let's hope it recognizes 3.3v RS232 like the article said). To use it, I just plug in the gnd to gnd, cable tx to controller rx, and cable rx to controller tx through a voltage divider and use it like I would a USB arduino?
thanks! ;D