[time-nuts] Arduino GPSDO with 1ns res TIC

Graham planophore at aei.ca
Thu Feb 13 16:49:40 UTC 2014


Actually, you don't need an Arduino board to use the Arduino IDE to 
program an Arduino nor do you you need the USB interface to the Arduino 
board to program an Arduino.

For example, you can have a simple Atmega328 circuit with a six or ten 
pin in circuit programming connection (ISP) connected to a programmer, a 
USBtiny for example, the programmer in turn is plugged into your 
computer usb port. You select an appropriate board from the list in the 
Arduino IDE and select a programmer from the programmer list and  from 
the File menu select "Upload using  programmer" and your Arduino like 
clone will get programmed using the programmer. The advantage of this is 
that you do not need a bootloader and will have that bit of program 
space for your own use. You will note that many Arduino boards have a 
six pin ISP connector on them already.

So, what board do you select from the drop down? Depends on how you 
built your circuit, if you used an Atmega328P with a 16MHz external 
crystal, you could select something like the Duemilanove w/Atmega328.

But, the real fun begins when your circuit isn't quite the same as any 
of the listed boards because you can create your own board definition 
and include it in the boards.txt file. For example, an atmega328 using 
an external 20MHz or 10MHz crystal. But wait, it gets better, you can 
create board defintions for Arduino's using other atmel chips like the 
attiny85 and attiny2313 and create your program using the same Arduino 
IDE and many of the same libraries and existing sketches and program 
same through that same IDE. What you do loose however is the serial port 
connection which is useful for debugging or whatever BUT you can include 
serial support in your sketch and still have that feature.

Chris is right, the basic Arduino connected through your basic USB cable 
is the simplest why to get started.

cheers, Graham ve3gtc


On 14-02-13 04:11 PM, Chris Albertson wrote:
> You can buy the chip already on the PCB with supporting circuitry for
> less then the price of the chip alone.  No need to go with a bare
> chip.  I think the reason is that the tiny SMT package chips sell in
> the millions and only a hob best would use the larger DIP through hole
> package.   Look at eBay #221326355393 as an example.  The 3>71 price
> includes shipping.  The advantage is __Programming__.  When you are
> working on something like this you tend to want to re-program the
> chips ten times an hour and it s VERY convenient to be able to leave
> it plugged into the USB port on your computer.  Also for debugger a
> continuous stream of data on your computer screen, maybe captured to a
> file, gives yo insight to the internals.
>
> That is the advantage of development with the Arduino vs. a bare chip,
> you don't have to pull the chip to re-program it.  Yousimply change a
> line of code using a text editor and click the "load" icon and a few
> seconds later you are running again.  It is a very fast development
> cycle.
>
> You don't save either cost or space by using a large DIP chip the SMD
> chip soldered to a PCB is about the same cost and size but also comes
> with the pull up resisters, voltage regulater, standard 6-pin FTDI
> interface and so on.
>




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