11. The BreadboArduino

Hobbytronics supply the components necessary to build on a breadboard, an Arduino! They recommend using the Sparkfun FT232 breakout board, which enables power and USB communication to be delivered via a USB cable to your PC.

However, having bought the Adafruit FTDI cable, described in an earlier post,  I thought I would like to use that instead.

So I put the whole thing together, including a 6-pin header for the FTDI cable, made from an 8-pin length of double male header, using 6 of the pins for the FTDI cable, and pushing the remaining pins right through so that there is plenty of grip on the breadboard:

Here is the BreadboArduino in its final form (with some connections to another project), and with the FTDI cable plugged in at the top left:

In the bottom left area, I included a voltage regulator for powering the other project to which it is connected.  The ATMega chip supplied by Hobbytronics has a useful label stuck on top to indicate the pin connections, and comes pre-loaded with the bootloader program.

So now I have quite a collection of Arduinos - the Arduino Uno R3, the one on the Gertboard, the Boarduino, and the BreadboArduino.  There are of course many other forms of Arduino, but I suppose I'll have to call a halt on building up this part of the collection.