Reading chip content, and make a copy?

Forum 2005-2010 (read only) General Frequently-Asked Questions
#1

Hei
New in here, and fint it a little hard searching the forum :-/
Anyway, i was thinking of using arduino for a product. Cost is important so i plan to use mostly ATMega328 28 Pin 20MHz with an external crystal…
I see it is offered with the arduino bootloader also, but it cost 25% more.
I had this idea the it would be cool to copy my arduino chip over to a complet blank one. With the arduino bootloader and everything. So basically i would need to reed the chip and copy it over to the new one.

It would be extra cool to do it without a computer connected, only another arduino.

Any thoughts? :slight_smile:

#2

You can use the ISP sketch to program any chip externally (including setting the fuses).
(e.g. http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Code/MegaISP )

You can change that code to program autonomously rather than waiting for STK500 commands (this needs some understanding of the code).

Then just make a copy of the upper part of its own FLASH, byte by byte.
Don’t forget to also set the fuses!

Edit:
With the help of a PC it is just this: http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/ArduinoISP

#3

you don’t need to read the chip to get the bootloader either, you can download it from the arduino website (you really should look into what open source means!)

#4

Of course, but the question was how to do it without the help of a PC.

#5

Thanks a lot, for some good references :smiley:

I will dig into the code and tutorials when some time soon.
Would need to buy some more chips to get started i guess :slight_smile:

I work as a java programmer during the day, and hardly use anything else then open source, and have a few contributions myself… (so i know what it means).
…but like in the java community, what i really like about arduino are the people like you guys helping giving me a flying start ;D

Hope i mange, and maybe someone else would be interested in the same…?
I´ll try to keep the post updated…

#6

...and sorry for all the typos :-[

#7

I dont see why you couldnt san's pc, but its not going to be something already figured out

people make fuse doctors which are basically little single use programmers set on a avr chip to enable "high voltage" programming (so if you screw up your fuses you can set them back to default)

I think your main concern outside of how to actually program a avr chip (which I breifly looked, there is not a ton of info out there, but you could reverse it from the gnu avr tools) would be storage

#8