hello.arduino.168 example and tutorial / Part.01

This tutorial tries to put together the info of the whole process, - start to end -, of fabricating a hello.arduino.168 PCB. The information is already on line, most of it in the Fab Academy various web pages (referenced below), but it is scattered throughout different Fab Academy classes, tutorials and project pages. Here i will try to put it together, step by step, and oriented to beginners with no experience in electronics - such as i was when starting with the process. I will try to explain clearly those steps of the process where myself and colleagues got stacked at some moments. The process once mastered is easy and straightforward. However, with no previous experience, some assumptions made by more experience users might become obstacles difficult to overcome - as happened to us for some time.

The tutorial tries to explain, too, general background and concepts related to the process. You might want to skip some parts and go directly to sections 2./ to get the necessary files, section 5./ to install the software you are going to need, and section 6./ to follow the actual fabrication instructions.


1./ Description :: hello.arduino.168/328P PCB

Arduino (http://www.arduino.cc) is an open hardware Input/Output board that works together with a free software programming environment, the Arduino programming language, libraries and IDE, - which are based on Wiring (Hernando Barragán), Processing (Ben Fry and Casey Reas) and C (Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie...), among other software developments. The project was initiated and ist still lead by Massimo Banzi, David Cuartielles, David Mellis, Tom Igoe, Gianluca Martino and others.



The hello.arduino.168 I/O board is a simplfied version of an arduino board, - based on the ATmega 168A microcontoller -, that has been developed by several people around the Fab Academy, including Neil Gershenfeld, David Mellis and others.

Design and production of this PCB is one of the option of the Fab Academy "Embedded programming" class; see: http://academy.cba.mit.edu/classes/embedded_programming/index.html

The board allows for input and output signals / devices management, using the Arduino IDE (or the avrdude & gcc toolchain). It provides 6/11 input/output pins. THis design doesn't use all the ATmega168 available pins (32 of them). The ctual versiomn explained here uses, as mentioned before the ATmega 168 micro and doesn't incorporate an optional 8MHz resonator (crystal). The resonator improves the board performance, and is necessary for certain applications such as controlling servo motors. The process would be analogous using the ATmega 328P microcontroller. Notice however, that it should be 328P and not just 328 (which is the one that used to be included in the Fab Inventory en 2013).

In order to program the hello.arduino board an FTDI (5V) cable is used to connect it to a computer (digikey part num.

Reference files location (Fab Academy / Neil Gershenfeld and collaborators): board, traces, components; c and make files (avrdude), boards.txt (Arduino IDE). Sources:

http://academy.cba.mit.edu/classes/embedded_programming

3./ Tutorials, info sources and URLs

Anna Kaziunas France's / AS220 hello.arduino tutorial page: http://academy.cba.mit.edu/content/tutorials/akf/hello_arduino.html

Fabduino/Fabkit page (including Fabkit Eagle and boards.txt files): http://fab.cba.mit.edu/content/projects/fabkit/

Fabio page : http://makeyourbot.wikidot.com/fabio-1-1 (soldering order)

Atmega 168A data sheet (to check microcontroller pins)

AVR Isp mkII User Guide (check here order of connector cables for Fabkit, p. 26)

Other sources:

AK's + stackoverflow dialout group configuration (to use AVR isp mk II programmer with Ubuntu 13.10):

http://academy.cba.mit.edu/content/tutorials/akf/embedded_programming_arduinoIDE.html#runAsSudo

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5412727/avrisp-mkii-doesnt-work-with-avrdude-in-linux

Arduino 1.0.5 third party hardware (Arduino IDE bootloader configuration):

https://github.com/arduino/Arduino/wiki/Arduino-IDE-1.5---3rd-party-Hardware-specification