Arduino Bootloader

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The price difference between an ATmega328 complete with the

bootloader and one without is about 1.50UKP which, although not
that great, it soon adds up once the Arduino bug bites and you start
making your own Arduino clones.
The idea of burning the bootloader oneself using an Arduino as the
programmer is a bit daunting for fear of ending up with two nonworking ATmega328s but, thanks to the work of others, it turns out
to be relatively easy.

The Hardware
I recommend building a "bare-bones" Arduino on a breadboard on
which to mount the "target" ATmega328 (ie, the one about to have
the bootloader burnt in). This makes it much easier to deal with any
issues about the auto-reset if an Arduino board is used.

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Besides an Arduino we're going to use as the programmer and the

ATmega328 that we're going to program with the bootloader, we
also need a handful of support components:

1 x 10K 1/8 watt resistor.

2 x 22pF capacitors.
1 x 16 MHz crystal.
1 x Breadboard.
hookup wire.

The ATmega328 pinout

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Begin by inserting a 10K resistor from the

breadboard's 5 volt bus at about row 21, as shown
here.
This will mark the ATMega328's Pin 1 - its RESET
pin. Pulling this pin high (ie to +5 volts) through the
10K resistor will stop any uncertainty about the pin's
"state" and will prevent it resetting the chip at an
inconvenient moment.
The resistor is also a useful "reference point" for
when we insert the other few components we need
to build the minimal Arduino clone.
Now that we
know where the
ATmega328's pin
1 will be, we can
add the chip's +5
volts and ground
connections.
The main +5
volts is on pin 7.
Since we inserted
the 10K resistor
for pin 1 at the
breadboard's row
21, it's easy to
work out that the
+5 volt pin will
be at breadboard
row 27. Next
door, at pin 8, we
can insert the
chip's ground
connection.

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Looking at the
ATMega328's
pinout drawing
above, we can
see that there's
another ground
connection on the
other side of the
chip, directly
opposite pin 7.
So, we can easily
pinpoint that
location and add
a ground wire.
On the same side,
there are two
more power
connections (for
the Analogue
funtions in the
chip). We can just
tie those to the +5
volt bus for now.
And finally, as
we've used both
edges of the
breadboard's
power buses, we
need to join them
together - the two
long vertical
wires in this
picture.

1996 - 2014 vwlowen.co.uk

Next we need to
insert the two
22pF capacitors
between the two
Crystal Oscillator
pins on the
ATmega328 and
the breadboard's
Ground bus - as
shown here.
The
ATmega328's
crystal oscillator
pins are pins 9
and 10. Nice and
easy to locate
right alongside
the ground

connection at pin
8.
The last
component to
go in, before the
chip itself, is the
16MHz crystal.
The pin-spacing
on crystals is
usually wider
than across two
rows on the
breadboard so
you'll need to
bend them
inwards slightly.
Make sure the
crystal case isn't
touching a lead
of either of the
capacitors.
And finally, the
ATmega328. Pin 1
is aligned with our
10K resistor on
breadboard row
21. It sits across
the trough in the
breadboard and
everything else
falls into place!
The breadboard
will get its power
from the Arduino
that's going to be
doing the
programming, so
connecting the
Arduino to the
breadboard is the
next step
(nearly!).....
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