The Arduino Platform (ATmega88PA, ATmega168PA, and ATmega328P)

The Arduino Platform is a collection of great and inexpensive micro controller boards, based on Atmel's AVR product line. The most popular chip is probably the ATmega168, but many people have started to replace it with the pin compatible ATmega328. Lately the ATmega644 got more and more popular for more demanding projects.

Arduino IDE

The Arduino community has also created a very intuitive software environment, which can be downloaded from here for free.

Uploading your program can be tricky. It is really important to select the correct board, because the upload speed depends on the firmware:

Board	Baud Rate
ATmega168 based	19200 baud
ATmega328 based (before Uno)	57600 baud
Uno	115200 baud

Arduino Board(s)

The Arduino Diecimila is a great for beginners. It has been updated and is called Duemilanove now.

Boarduino

If you are a little more adventurous - the Boarduino is a better choice. You can buy a kit from Adafruit webshop, but you have to solder it yourself. The advantage is, that the footprint is very small and you can decide what kind of header you want to use. I bought three and put male headers on the first (for bread boards), female headers on the second (for direct wiring to the sensors), and terminal screw-blocks on the third (for really flexible wiring).

Arduino like...

Pin (Re)mapping

ATmega328						Arduino
Pin	Name	Additional	Comparator	Timer	PCINT	Digital Pin	Analog Pin	Additional
2	PD0	RXD			PCINT16	digital pin 0		RX
3	PD1	TXD			PCINT17	digital pin 1		TX
4	PD2	INT0			PCINT18	digital pin 2
5	PD3	INT1		OC2B	PCINT19	digital pin 3		PWM
6	PD4	XCK/T0			PCINT20	digital pin 4
11	PD5	T1		OC0B	PCINT21	digital pin 5		PWM
12	PD6	AIN0		OC0A	PCINT22	digital pin 6		PWM
13	PD7	AIN1			PCINT23	digital pin 7
14	PB0	CLKO/ICP1			PCINT0	digital pin 8
15	PB1			OC1A	PCINT1	digital pin 9		PWM
16	PB2	SS		OC1B	PCINT2	digital pin 10		PWM/SS
17	PB3	MOSI		OC2A	PCINT3	digital pin 11		PWM/MOSI
18	PB4	MISO			PCINT4	digital pin 12		MISO
19	PB5	SCK			PCINT5	digital pin 13		LED/SCK
9	PB6	XTAL1/TOSC1			PCINT6			crystal
10	PB7	XTAL2/TOSC2			PCINT7			crystal
23	PC0		ADC0		PCINT8	digital pin 14	analog input 0
24	PC1		ADC1		PCINT9	digital pin 15	analog input 1
25	PC2		ADC2		PCINT10	digital pin 16	analog input 2
26	PC3		ADC3		PCINT11	digital pin 17	analog input 3
27	PC4	SDA	ADC4		PCINT12	digital pin 18	analog input 4	SDA
28	PC5	SCL	ADC5		PCINT13	digital pin 19	analog input 5	SCLS
1	PC6	RESET			PCINT14			reset

Projects

LED Tutorial

Other Projects