Arduino without an Arduino

No, I'm not talking about the dodgy knock offs you can get with "Arduino" in the wrong font, or the more genuine, fair play Arduino variants that build on the platform as an open source project and make their own clones, without breaking any of Arduino's rules...

I'm talking about creating the essence of an Arduino UNO on your breadboard without going out and buying an Arduino UNO for each project.

They are meant as really good prototyping platforms and the socket with the microcontroller in is not hard soldered for a reason, they also make excellent programmers for an Atmega328p!

Arduino is a platform of many variants and those variants are all microcontrollers, ways of you learning and prototyping microcontroller technology without as much difficulty as used to be the case.

The essence of an Arduino UNO is an atmega328p microcontroller. That's the thing that's interpreting voltages, outputing line levels. That's the processor that you're programming in your IDE.

It's economical, fun and informative to program the atmega328p outside of an arduino. Or at least to use a pre programmed one.

Here's a short video I made of me building an Arduino UNO equivalent on a breadboard from scratch and programming it in circuit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNaqhjcyn-4&t=34s

Includes a simple blink sketch.



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