I know this is probably a silly question but can I take my UNO chip out of its holder and solder it to so bredboard? I have also read somewhere that if I connected 5V to the 5V pin on the chip then it might not be stable.
For my project I could keep my chip in its place and mount it somewhere on the machine. I could also power it by a 9v, centre positive plug like it tells you to on here. But for the sake of ergonomics it would be better to put the chip on a little piece of breadboard out the way and power it from the 5V psu I have on the machine i need it to work on.
Any advice would be much appreciated.
My advice is to google
Arduino stand alone
there are lots of pages telling you what to do.
Basically you need the chip, some capacitors, a resistor and a crystal.
Cheers Mike