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How to build a $5 Arduino clone
- jgrahamc 14y agoThis isn't an "Arduino (clone)" by any measure. It's an ATMEGA on a breadboard. The advantage of the Arduino as sold is that it's an all-in-one package (USB interface, handy headers broken out for access to PINs, LEDs, voltage regulation, serial port, etc.) and it is very useful for _prototyping_. Once you've prototyped using an Arduino you can then go select the minimal set of components you need using the smallest appropriate ATMEGA for your application and get it under $5.
- dlhavema 14y agoThat's very true, this would be useful to seasoned Arduino hackers, but not the broke college kid trying to get into Arduino for less than the 30$ and can't wait for the holidays... author: please proofread the post... i'm no Grammar Nazi, but the plethora of errors in that post made me cringe...
- hansc 14y agoThanks for the comment about grammer: Fixed that now (I think). This post is meant for non EE people, to explain how to use the ATMEGA for a lower price.
- stilldavid 14y agoSparkFun employee here. Not trying to push products too hard, but if you've already got an FTDI board or cable, you can pick up a Pro Mini for just ten bucks now. That's double the $5 the article claims, but the pro mini comes with power and status LEDs, an on-board voltage regulator and reset button. I use them in most all of my projects because they're so easy to work with, which is far from the case when using an atmega on a breadboard. Plus they're breadboard friendly :) http://sfe.io/11113 http://sfe.io/11113
- ragmondo 14y agoHi Sparkfun employee ! Can you send a link to the ftdi board or cable you require to do this ? Thanks.
- jgrahamc 14y agohttps://www.sparkfun.com/products/9718 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9718 You'll need to do some soldering.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- inoop 14y agoChina beats your price by $0.95 and has free shipping :) http://dx.com/p/arduino-pro-mini-microcontroller-circuit-board-blue-5v-16mhz-178183 http://dx.com/p/arduino-pro-mini-microcontroller-circuit-boa...
- mercuryrising 14y agoHopefully you don't need it soon, that will take 4-6 weeks to get to you.
- inoop 14y agoLast time I ordered a mini pro, a bluetooth bridge, and a couple of dht11's it took two weeks. I'm in Europe, and Sparkfun is not much faster for me. If I want something the next day I usually go for a local provider. The great thing about dx is that they will ship a single $9 board to your house for free :)
- _fs 14y agodealextreme actually ships pretty quickly. I've ordered items from California and had them in my hand 5 days later, using their free shipping option.
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- TheAnimus 14y agoArduino and Netduino are great, but I think people like the author sort of forget why. Back a few years ago, you could buy very cheap microcontrollers, then with a few $ of components make a simple programmer from the PCs parallel port or serial. http://picpgm.picprojects.net/hardware.html http://picpgm.picprojects.net/hardware.html for a nice collection of them. These where great, they cost about £1.50 each iirc, and I really liked them, by the time I went to uni I knew my Microchip PIC MASM by heart. However people who are just learning about programming electronics don't really want to have to figure out the joys of GPIOA3 being shared with the ADC when trying to attach an LED. Arduino providing a nice simple formfactor for allowing people to simply plonk them together, no worries about which pins can do what, how much can be driven. All the packages made it quite clear what could play nicely together. This doesn't change that. Nor does it mention that if your the kind of geek who is thinking of buying say 3 or more of them you'd be much better off with oldschool prototyping board, a vertible smorgasboard of uCs and a simple programmer. There are some great PIC ones that even have the ICD (In Circuit Debugging!) on ebay for next to nothing.
- patja 14y agoI believe the big advantage of Arduino is in the tooling and vast quantity of working code samples and projects you can find on the web. While the IDE has its quirks it is easy for newbs getting started, has decent samples bundled in, and works very well with real Arduinos where you just plug the USB cable in and go. I've gone the bare-ATMEGA328P route with an ICSP programmer as well and still value the leverage the IDE gives me to leverage code samples I find on the web.
- hansc 14y agoTotally agree with the formfactor thing: Just love that you can LEGO stuff together. But even as a MsC in EE, I love that I can do this and then create a real thing from it with breadboarding, proto pcb or a custom designed PCB. The other thing I like a lot (even more I think) is that there is such a great community with many, many examples, so you don't have to dive into the bit level to get a sensor or module working.
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- drone 14y agoThis is just a subset of the official arduino tutorial on the subject [1]. And there are about 5,000 other articles showing the same thing. [2] Seems kinda odd, and late in the game, to re-document something that's already been documented so many times. [1] http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Standalone http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Standalone [2] https://www.google.com/search?q=minimal+breadboard+arduino https://www.google.com/search?q=minimal+breadboard+arduino EDIT: judgmental statement removed, as it was unnecessary
- pudquick 14y agoIndeed - I found this article to be even less of a guide, per se, because the actual plans were hosted on a completely different site: http://aeturnalus.com/robotics/poor-mans-breadboard-arduino/ http://aeturnalus.com/robotics/poor-mans-breadboard-arduino/ ... which, in turn, reminded me of a similar guide which was even more explicit about wiring in the 5V power supply: http://log.liminastudio.com/itp/physical-computing/breadboard-arduino-fast-cheap-and-fun http://log.liminastudio.com/itp/physical-computing/breadboar... To me, the parent post just smacks of blogspam (mostly links to high rank domains and content developed by others).
- drone 14y agoIndeed, I had said something of the sort before I edited it out. The fact that it ranked so high on HN for so long, and got so many upvotes simply goes to show that using Arduino is an effective way of getting attention from HN. The the OP: As a matter of constructive criticism, you speak about how much you've gained from the open-source hardware community, but the hardware you sell, which by your own definition is based on this, seems to be closed-source. Your blog, thus-far, appears to offer little new content and seems to re-create common content from others. It would be most helpful for the community if you would explore what contributions you could make that would, perhaps, be new information for many. Here's a suggestion or two: consider publishing the hardware schematics, and talking about your "wireless communication protocol" between the Grow nodes and the host station. Talk about what the software looks like, what challenges you faced, and how you overcame them. ... just a suggestion.
- nkozyra 14y agoOr for less than that you can just buy a TI Launchpad; $4 delivered. You'll have to use strict C and use breakouts and your own breadboard/components, but it's cheap enough to be disposable for hobbyists.
- a13xnet 14y agoI second getting the TI Launchpad. Great and super-cheap piece of kit With Energia (http://energia.nu/ http://energia.nu/) you can even use your Arduino sketches and run them on MSP430 Launchpad!
- drivers99 14y agoJust googled it and lots of articles say they are $4-$5 but where you can buy them, they appear to be $9.99 now. I wonder if they bumped up the price recently.
- a13xnet 14y agoI just bought few for $4.30 each from TI directly: http://ti.com/launchpad http://ti.com/launchpad
- solistice 14y agoWasn't there a preorder that had the new ones (32bit) for 5$? Wish I'd have gotten in on that thing. Maybe that's causing a little confusion on the pricing here. Edit:When talking about TI, i thought I'd share this subsite by TI (http://tideals.com/ http://tideals.com/) for anyone who isn't savy on it yet. They don't have a deal right now though.
- nkozyra 14y agoTI does this periodically. It will be back to ~$4 soon enough.
- davidrudder 14y agoArduino is a great platform for prototyping on, but it's kind of expensive and bulky for a finished product. At least my $30 uno is. Being able to make a stand-alone is great! I can prototype on my arduino, then use it to burn the code onto a bare chip. I found this article easier to read than the one on Arduino's wiki. It's basically the same information, but with better explanations and pictures.
- InclinedPlane 14y agoCheck out the digispark: http://digistump.com/#digispark http://digistump.com/#digispark Also take a look at the parallax propeller: http://www.parallax.com/propeller/ http://www.parallax.com/propeller/ Both are cheap (sub $10 per chip), tiny, and easy to use.
- kefka 14y agoWe've known that Atmel CPUs are cheap. I just bought a tube of them a week ago for less than $20. And I have enough regulators and spare junk to make a fakeduino for $3-ish. That hasn't been the point. I can go buy a nice, stackable hardware platform with everything Open and just not worry about it. The bootcode has already been written, and the IDE is short and sweet. Everything "Just Works". And then, we can discuss the crazy good amount of modules that have extended the Arduino IDE (and associated hardware). It's well worth $30 for a rapid prototyping and design. Then, once I get a set design, I can go the chip+regulator+resistors route. And then I can tear the breadboarded setup on my Arduino and use it for another project testing!
- davidrudder 14y agoArduino is a great platform for prototyping on, but it's kind of expensive and bulky for a finished product. At least my $30 uno is. Being able to make a stand-alone is great! I can prototype on my arduino, then use it to burn the code onto a bare chip. I found this article easier to read than the one on Arduino's wiki. It's basically the same information, but with better explanations and pictures.
- beatboxrevival 14y agoQuick plug for Teensy. You can get Teensy 2.0 for $16 and you don't need a FTDI cable. http://www.pjrc.com/store/teensy.html http://www.pjrc.com/store/teensy.html
- nedludd 14y agoCos the Arduino is too expensive ;-)
- solistice 14y agohttp://shrimping.it/blog/shrimp/ http://shrimping.it/blog/shrimp/ here's a link to another blog which does it for 3$. A 5$ device "cloning" partial Arduino functionality is really not impressing me anymore.