My question is: What is on an Arduino board besides the microcontroller?
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1arduino.cc/en/uploads/Main/Arduino_Uno_Rev3-schematic.pdf– gre_gorCommented Jul 13, 2016 at 16:58
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Welcome to SE-A! This is a very vague question. Are you talking components (which can be found in links provided by others), are you talking about block diagrams (features broken down by sections?). What have you looked at and what have you found? Can you build one yourself. Yes, quite easily. Should you? Depends. What do you want to achieve? There are plenty of clones out there which are a great place to start. They're cheap and take some of the guesswork out. If you like the guesswork, start with nano's or even breadboards.– MadivadCommented Jul 30, 2016 at 1:37
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2 Answers
When I first built my first Arduino clone, I fount very useful the Fritzing examples (boards and schematics). http://fritzing.org/home/
Mind that in order to upload sketches, an FTDI module is very handy (unless you use ISP via another Arduino board).
In any case, I should recommend you to build an Arduino clone on a breadboard, before trying soldering.
Good luck.
Additionally, you may use this picture (this is how I create an Arduino on breadboard):
External power (battery) is connected to the screw pins (bottom left of the breadboard).
answered Jul 13, 2016 at 22:13
This list is probably not exhaustive but comes reasonably close:
- A power supply (voltage regulator and filter capacitor);
- A USB connector for powering from a USB port and passing data to/from your PC;
- A second processor (Atmega 16U2) for handling USB <-> serial data conversion;
- A barrel-jack for powering it from a 7 - 12v;
- A MOSFET for selecting whichever power source is being used;
- An LED connected to the chip's digital pin 13;
- A pushbutton for manual reset and a capacitor for auto-reset;
- A 16 MHz crystal and load capacitors;
- Several lengths of female headers for connecting plug-wires or shields to the Arduino.
And yes, it's relatively easy to build one - instructive, too! There are how-to project details all over the Internet. I've hand-built any number of them, just soldering up whatever parts I wanted.
Here is an Arduino home brew project, CSEDuino, that was easy and fun to build, with good detailed directions. It is an Arduino clone that does everything the Uno does, except that it isn't physically compatible with Arduino shields.
All of my gadgets are on home-brewDuinos. I usually skip the USB connector and 16U2 processor, and keep one or two FTDI USB to serial cables on my bench to power or program whatever board I'm currently working on. I usually skip the auto-reset capacitor too, and manually reset the board to upload it.
Have fun building!
In service, I just power them from a USB wall charger. Any of them that need to communicate get an radio of some kind, usually Bluetooth or Wifi. Some of them just collect data to non-volatile memory for me read out later.
