
How to build a $5 Arduino clone - hansc
http://hwstartup.wordpress.com/2013/03/06/how-to-build-a-5-arduino-clone/
======
jgrahamc
This 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.

~~~
stilldavid
SparkFun 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>

~~~
inoop
China beats your price by $0.95 and has free shipping :)

[http://dx.com/p/arduino-pro-mini-microcontroller-circuit-
boa...](http://dx.com/p/arduino-pro-mini-microcontroller-circuit-board-
blue-5v-16mhz-178183)

~~~
deelowe
Of course they do. That's how most of use get our breadboard wires, caps,
resistors, ICs, etc... Everyone in the electronics community knows that
sparkfun(and sites like adafruit) aren't the cheapest in the industry, but
that's not why we buy from them. Heck even mouser or digikey beat them on most
stuff.

I buy from sparkfun because: \- They provide eagle files and data sheets for
most things they carry \- They provide real time customer support in IRC \-
They don't screw up orders or take 6 weeks to ship \- They test, use,
continuously improve, and deprecate their own stuff

I know it doesn't apply in this case, but go try to find board files,
schematics, or datasheets for most of this stuff on dx. There's a reason
sparkfun is so popular.

~~~
pyoung
A few months ago I bought a kit from Sparkfun to mess around with. Got
everything built only to find out that something was wrong with the FTDI (I
couldn't upload new sketches). After a quick e-mail exchange, Sparkfun sent
out a whole new board.

For people who don't know much about hardware, that kind of customer service
is invaluable. Without it, I could have spent days trying to figure out what
was wrong, only to give up in frustration. Instead, I got quick confirmation
that there was something wrong with the board and was immediately sent a
replacement (at no extra cost).

------
TheAnimus
Arduino 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> 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.

~~~
misnome
> 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.

The Arduino and similar products (microcontrollers right down to PICs) seem
interesting and appealing, but I'd much rather approach the issue from an EE
perspective, and the thought of learning to do this like in the article - with
the chip itself on a breadboard, seems much more appealing.

It's just a very intimidating space, and I have no idea how to approach it
iteratively without jumping straight in to something like the Arduino, which
presumably hides a lot of the complexity. I've looked at Sparkfun and would
love to understand enough to start using some of the cool looking components
on it.

Do you have any insight or suggestions for a path to learning this?

~~~
mercuryrising
With new microcontrollers, almost everything has moved onto the chip itself.
The "EE" perspective (the surrounding circuitry) is little more than following
the datasheet and observing the rules for routing. Sparkfun is awesome not
only because they sell cool things, but because they release many of their
schematics, check this one out - <https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11113>
(click 'schematic' or 'eagle files' (if you don't have eagle, you'll need that
too - <http://www.cadsoftusa.com/)>).

You can see all the pieces needed to make an 'Arduino'. A voltage regulator, a
reset switch with a pull up resistor, some filtering capacitors, and a crystal
oscillator. That's it. If you make a board yourself that runs off of a Lithium
battery, you don't need a voltage regulator, might not need a reset switch,
you can use the internal oscillators, and you have almost nothing outside of
the microcontroller. It's really amazing.

I don't think you meant 'EE perspective' this way, but if you meant getting
closer to the machine code, one thing you can do and still be able to do
everything nice is rip open the Arduino source code, or re-implement the
functions they provide. Try rewriting digitalWrite(PIN, STATE), or
analogRead(PIN), and see how many instructions those functions need.

------
drone
This 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>

[2] <https://www.google.com/search?q=minimal+breadboard+arduino>

_EDIT: judgmental statement removed, as it was unnecessary_

~~~
pudquick
Indeed - 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/>

... 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/breadboar...](http://log.liminastudio.com/itp/physical-
computing/breadboard-arduino-fast-cheap-and-fun)

To me, the parent post just smacks of blogspam (mostly links to high rank
domains and content developed by others).

~~~
drone
Indeed, 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.

------
kefka
We'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!

------
solistice
<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.

------
davidrudder
Arduino 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
Check out the digispark: <http://digistump.com/#digispark>

Also take a look at the parallax propeller:
<http://www.parallax.com/propeller/>

Both are cheap (sub $10 per chip), tiny, and easy to use.

------
nkozyra
Or 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.

~~~
drivers99
Just 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
I just bought few for $4.30 each from TI directly: <http://ti.com/launchpad>

~~~
solistice
Wasn'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/>) for anyone who isn't savy on it yet. They don't have a
deal right now though.

------
beatboxrevival
Quick 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>

------
nedludd
Cos the Arduino is too expensive ;-)

