Arduino Playground is read-only starting December 31st, 2018. For more info please look at this Forum Post

Standalone Arduino

Brian W Evans

(image is missing)

Here are two drawings that show the pinout, or the physical location of each pin, of the Arduino microcontroller and the most basic running circuit diagram. There are some tradeoffs by using this method, like having to program the chip in the Arduino before unplugging it and plugging it into the board but for minimal design this is a good option. (Although Paul Badger's Real Bare Bones Board is pretty small too and might save some work.)

The most complicated part of the process is wiring up the crystal or resonator. There are 2 possible choices here, both work pretty much the same but I find the crystal easier to hook up on a solderless breadboard or similar perfboard.

The rest of the hookup is pretty straightforward, just make sure the right pins are properly wired to either +5v or Ground.

There are a couple of components to make this work.

Crystal or Resonator:

Option 1:

  • 16MHz Ceramic Resonator Jameco# 324662

OR

Option 2:

  • 16MHz Crystal HC49/US Jameco# 325139
  • 20pF Ceramic Disc Capacitors Jameco # 332321 (x2)

If this is being soldered to a perfboard you need a socket for the chip:

  • 28pin DIP IC Socket Jameco# 683171

You will not need a socket if this is only going into a solderless breadboard.

To power it up, you need a clean stable source of 5 volts DC. This means that you either pick up a switching 5V DC power supply from your favorite retailer, mail order one from Jameco or you will have to wire up a voltage regulator. Page 254 of Tom Igoe's Physical Computing has a nice layout of a 7805 voltage regulator with a couple decoupling capacitors.

For the voltage regulator you will need these parts:

  • 7805 Voltage Regulator Jameco# 51263
  • 10μF Electrolytic Capacitor Jameco# 94220
  • 1μF Electrolytic Capacitor Jameco# 94160

Finally you will need something to stick all these parts into. Feel free to use anything you want: plastic, wood, a herring... The easiest method is to just use a spare breadboard, but the second easiest method is to permantly solder everything together using a copper clad perf board available at Radio Shack. These have holes drilled in a phenolic substrate with little copper rings, or pads, on one side.

  • 213 Hole Mini Board Radio Shack# 276-148 (This is small and square.)

OR

  • 417 Hole Board Radio Shack# 276-150 (This is kinda like your breadboard.)

Ok, that is basically it. I will update this as time permits with additional drawings and photos.