Solderless Construction of Minimalist Arduino

Overview

An Arduino clone is featured in this Minimalist Arduino with a design for use in permanent or custom circuits on solderless breadboards, stripboards, or custom PCBs.

Explanation

Only the bare minimum parts required for building the Arduino platform are contained in the assembly. The two main components comprising the parts include the power supply circuit and the ATmega328P with supporting circuitry. The LM7805 voltage regulator, 10uF capacitors, 150Ohm resistor, and 3mm green LED make up the power supply circuit. The 328P chip can be driven using only one power source coming from these components with 7-18V input voltage or from a separate regulated voltage source such as power over a USB to Serial FTDI converter. A clock crystal, 22pF capacitors, 10KOhm resistor, 3mm green LED, 150Ohm resistor, and 100nF capacitor are included in the remainder of the components of the ATmega328P circuit and support.

The primary method of programming and communicating with the Minimalist Arduino in conjunction with the Arduino IDE is by using the USB to Serial FTDI chip. Using an AVR programmer over the ICSP header is another method for programming the ATmega328. Using another Arduino is the 3rd option for programming.