Arduino Uno to ATmega328 - Shrinking your Arduino Projects

Learn how to transfer your Arduino Uno projects to an ATmega328 Chip.

In this final episode of 2018, I will show you how to take the projects you have built using an Arduino Uno and “shrinkify” them down to an ATmega328 chip. This will allow you to make a permanent version of your project without using up one of your precious Arduino boards.

The ATmega328 is the microcontroller chip at the heart of the Arduino Uno. It is available in several packages, we will focus on the common 28-pin DIP (Dual Inline Package).

You only need a handful of components to turn an ATmega328 chip into a fully-functional Arduino Uno equivalent. It’s much cheaper and a lot smaller, allowing you to build a permanent version of your design onto a small circuit board.

I will also show you three methods of programming the ATmega328 chip, after all an Arduino isn’t very useful if you can’t upload a sketch to it!

To illustrate my point I will put together a very simple yet cute “music box” using an Arduino Uno, and then we’ll move the project onto an ATmega328. It will be of particular interest to Star Wars fans as the “music box” plays “The Imperial March”. If you have an old Darth Vader or Storm Trouper toy it would be neat to build it into it!

Here is the Table of Contents for this video:

00:00 - Introduction
03:29 - The ATmega328
05:50 - Star Wars Arduino Project
08:35 - Star Wars Sketch
15:14 - Build an “Arduino” with ATmega328
21:31 - Loading the Program - Using Arduino Method 1
24:50 - Loading the Program - Using Arduino Method 2
30:01 - Loading the Program - Using FTDI Adapter

As always you will find an accompanying article for this video on the DroneBot Workshop website.

And a special thank you for all of your support in 2018. We are now over 50 thousand subscribers and that’s both amazing and humbling, I owe it all to my wonderful viewers.

All the best for a healthy and prosperous 2019. Hope to see you in the workshop next year!

[edinfific]

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[thanatosor]

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[aimagiciannepal]

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[Crusty_Camper]

Hi Bill, I was re-watching this video ( as I often do with yours as they are exactly what I need ) and I saw your comment about having 50, 000 subscribers in 2018. Then I noticed your current number is 555, 000. And very well deserved. All the best from the England/Scotland border, Pete

[cryptoarmy]

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[paulmcwhorter]

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[Fmus]

Your videos are always well organized and very informative.

[TonySwitzerland]

As a non native speaker of your language, I appreciate your clear and perfectly understandable language. And the interesting themes of course, too!!
Greetings from Switzerland.

[Mrpic]

Sometimes you find exactly the video you were looking for, explaining exactly what you want to know. This was it. Thank you.

[luberies]

You are one of the best teachers of electronics I´ve ever known. Thank you very much for your excellent videos!

[filetdelumiere]

Just arrived on your channel. I am a newbie at Arduino (not electronics). I really like the way you teach: very slow and calm, good video, good examples and schematics. Despite the fact that I am french It's a true pleasure to listen at you. Congratulations !

[SuperToughnut]

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[chrispotts]

Great vid with genuinely useful content. Nice to see a presenter who speaks at a normal, relaxed pace and not targetting 1000 words per minute. Great job. Thanks.

[looney]

As I've learned recently, there is also a way to program your MC using an Arduino board with flat chip that can't be removed. All you need to do is
1. upload "ArduinoISP" sketch (included in Arduino Studio examples) to Arduino board, thus turning it into an ISP programmer
2. Connect following 6 pins of your recipient MC (check pinout in the datasheet) to corresponding pins of your programmer (Arduino board, note that you might want/need to change the output pins in the "ArduinoISP" sketch code): MOSI, MISO, RESET, SCK, VCC, GND
3. Select "Programmer: Arduino as ISP" in Arduino Studio or similar option in IDE of your choice (I've done it with custom upload protocol in PlatformIO)
4. Upload your sketch as usual.
The video is still very informative, it clarifies the options to burn the firmware into the MC pretty well.

[neilallatt]

Your videos are great I am new to electronics and find you explain every thing so well, keep them coming. Forgot to tell you I'm 85 years young never to late to start.

[deschia_]

I love how he used 2 cameras and talked to both of them

[mandymcr]

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[michelbedard]

I am a retired electrical eng, and I always been excited to still work on electronic project and DSP algorithms, robotics and vintage radio restorations. I discovered your channel lately and I can say that I am amazed to see how clear are your explanations and how clean are your animates sketches bouncing am greatful for all your time and effort you take to share your vast experiences, you are a great source of inspirations for many electronics state of the art ( Québec, Canada)

[JerryEricsson]

I built some of these a few years back, as projects, I was just inventorying my chip collection this afternoon and discovered I had several brand new 328's in one tray, as well as some old atmega 8's. Nice review on how to use them again.

[fahtfakcarl]

Finally an electronics youtube channel that actually teaches you something