DIY Arduino - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / projects

author: Trigger
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 06, 2011, 04:25:49 am
content: Saw this on a Make video. It's not overly difficult and would make an excellent inexpensive project for a beginner to get some soldering experience and build something useful that can be used in other projects.http://revoltlab.com/projects/perfduino/Separate but loosely related and included for coolness.Wire Arduinohttp://www.geocities.jp/arduino_diecimila/obaka/project-7/index_en.html#top

author: johnboxall
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 07, 2011, 06:20:28 am
content: Very nice. A lot of casual observers think Arduino users are stuck with the full Uno/Mega board platform, which is a shame. There are many options ... for example there is the boarduino:http://www.adafruit.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=19&products_id=91dorkboard:http://dorkbotpdx.org/wiki/dorkboardand so on.or you can easily mash up your own project using the IC and your own design:e.g.http://wp.me/pQmjR-H3

author: Chet T16
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 07, 2011, 06:47:25 am
content: The core of my simple arduino based projects consists of nothing more than an attiny85, 2 caps and a voltage regulator. I still call it arduino, meaning just using the ide

author: Chet T16
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 07, 2011, 07:02:25 am
content: That's what I thought but you can use it without the bootloader too (seen that in an old blog and had to look it up)

author: sacherjj
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 07, 2011, 02:32:02 pm
content: Although, I think I would spend the extra money to get the AVR programmer ($35) over just the FTDI serial to USB breakout board ($15). Why not have something for a few extra bucks that will program all AVR chips.

author: Trigger
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 07, 2011, 03:00:40 pm
content: It's not even really the bootloader that makes Arduino. You can get bootloaders for other chips to load them serially. Arduino is the libraries and programming environment. The board designs are pretty much endless but you can still only use chips they support, but the chips they do support can do quite a bit

author: Trigger
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 07, 2011, 08:12:05 pm
content: Quote from: Trigger on May 07, 2011, 03:00:40 pmide,library,ftdi(programmer),bootloader,dev kit = arduino, all in one kit. user only have to know how to "sketch" and click the "play/upload" button. thats it!Arduino is the software, the hardware (while they use an open source design) isn't what makes it. You can use any hardware you want as long as you have a supported AVR chip. It may not be anofficialArduino board but without the software the boards just turn into another AVR dev board. It's the software that really sets them apart.I have a project in the near future when I get time for it to load an RTOS onto an UNO board. I'm going to do a freeRTOS port for it. Though after that I'll have to see what I can come up with to take advantage of it.

author: LEECH666
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2011, 12:50:00 pm
content: Reminds me of my first DIY Arduino attempt which I lovingly dubbed "Retarduino".Sadly I have yet to get it to work, but since I own an Iteaduino now I don't rly need to.I think I did something wrong when I flashed the AVR chip, since I only own a simple parallel SP12 programmer. I am however in the process of building a(simpler) copyof theUSBtinyISP.Anyway here is my Retarduino:http://picasaweb.google.com/oBsRVr666/RetarduinoIt's basically aMetaboardcombined with the breadboard feature [long pins on the bottom side] of theBoarduino.

author: LEECH666
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 23, 2011, 01:03:50 pm
content: The Chip I used is a standard ATMEGA168, which does not come with a hardware USB port (on chip). However Metaboard uses a software only implementation of the USB-Protocol. It doesn't need an FTDI-Chip.You can find more information about "Soft USB for AVR" here:http://www.obdev.at/products/vusb/index.htmlAs I said I haven't gotten it to detect correctly on my PC yet. I suppose I screwed up the Fusebits.Florian

author: cyberfish
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2011, 07:05:44 am
content: Signal integrity may be a problem, too?

author: LEECH666
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2011, 07:21:49 am
content: That is quite possible. It's been some time since I worked on it. I remember checkin it several times, but maybe I overlooked something. Or as we say in Germany: Den Wald vor lauter Bäumen nicht sehen.Which means "Not seeing the forest because of all the trees" (overlooking an obvious mistake).It also might have smth. to do with the pins the Soft USB uses. I remember being confused about theMetaboard schematicand the default pinsUSBaspLoaderuses.I might give it another try once I have more time at my hands.Florian

author: LEECH666
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2011, 12:51:10 pm
content: Sorry I think I misunderstood the meaning of signal inregrity.I've seen so many breadboard Arduino projects that I don't think this is really an issue here.I am under the impression that a well soldered perfboard design should be way less prone (to whatever effects might deteriorate the signal) than a breadboard. I might be wrong on this one.Florian

author: cyberfish
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2011, 03:08:51 pm
content: That's true, but most of them don't have USB. USB is a lot more prone to signal integrity issues than UART, because it's high speed differential (trace lengths should be matched).It's possible that this won't be a problem at low speed.

author: tsmz
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2011, 10:32:22 pm
content: I don't think the AVR software USB solution can handle anything except low speed. At 1.5 Mbit/s, it shouldn't be too much of a problem to have slightly unmatched trace lengths. However, the USB stuff is a real pain to debug. Do you get any errors when you plug it into your computer? The schematics are quite simple as far as the USB part is concerned, the only thing really important are the two 3.6 V Zener diodes connected to the USB data lines.

author: cyberfish
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2011, 10:35:12 pm
content: At 1.5Mbit/s it should be possible to see what the signals look like on a scope?

author: tsmz
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2011, 11:16:46 pm
content: It's no big use seeing the signals unless you have too much time on your hands. USB will spew out quite some amount of initialization messages, so if you're happy to decode them by hand, this shouldn't be a big problem at all.This won't help much, because there are just two reasons for this not to work:1) Hardware error, i.e. wrong components or bad soldering. Since it's such a small amount of connections to make, checking them by hand or even just re-doing it is probably the way to go.2) Software error, i.e. two-way communication is established, but the device doesn't respond correctly or you're missing a driver for the operating system.Usually, the OS will complain when you plug in a "bad" USB device, so it's quite interesting to know the message you're getting from the OS.

author: cyberfish
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2011, 02:50:36 am
content: It can at least let you verify that the voltage levels are as expected, and actually switch, and is not excessively noisy, etc. A lot of silly mistakes can be found with a casual look at the scope that only takes a few seconds.

author: LEECH666
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 27, 2011, 07:30:07 am
content: Well thanks for your replies. I think my soldering is quite good, however I can't rule out an error in my connections. It might also be Fusebit related or generally related to the programmer. I use my (kinda) crappy SP12 bit banging programmer with TwinAVR (programming software) and I think setting fuses is pretty difficult or well easy to screw up if you're new to this.Anyway I wasn't able to find anything on the fuse settings for Metaboard but a new search revealed this page:http://www.kassel.ccc.de/wiki/index.php?title=MetaboardsLuckily it's in German, and they state in the article that they had to contact the Metalab (developers of Metaboard) for the correct fusebits. This information wasn't available back when I built my Retarduino. I think it's likely that I screwed them up too.As I said before, I'll take another look at it, once I have a decent programmer and well ... more time.Cheers from Germany,Florian

author: phil_jp1
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2011, 01:12:15 am
content: Here's my really old arduino-like development board.Features:- ATmega32A- Real Time Clock DS1307- FT232R USB-UART Converter- SD Card Slot- 5V Precision Voltage Reference- Easily Exchangeable Crystal (socket)- Filtering Caps for ADC With DIP Switches- 3.3V Source- External Power or USB Powering options- Power ON/OFF Switch- Independent Pot- Independent Lo-Pass, High-Pass RC Filters- 10 LEDs

author: cyberfish
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2011, 01:51:17 am
content: Out of curiosity, why do you have all the capacitors and resistors on the back side, and everything else through-hole?

author: phil_jp1
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2011, 09:05:12 am
content: Quote from: cyberfish on June 30, 2011, 01:51:17 amIt's more compact that way, then doing everything through-hole.

author: PedroDiogo
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 01, 2011, 01:47:46 pm
content: Me and a few friends did an Arduino clone to teach people how to solder at our university.It was not the best choice for beginners I must say, it turned out a bit complex to solder.However it was quite a challenge to create, we had to replace the FTDI chip for a though hole version, for that we choose an ATTiny2313 with the CDC-AVR firmware, which brings a few limitations as it doesn't have DTR line so no auto-reset on the Arduino and it can't reach high baud rates.We also had to "mass-produce" 100 boards, drill them all by hand, flash all the ATMegas and ATTinys (twice actually, the first time I forgot to set the fuses!)Here are a few pictures:More pictures here (the website is in Portuguese, sorry for that):http://neecist.ist.utl.pt/neecduino/workshop.php