Assembling the ArduinoTM Diecimila Compatible Freeduino Serial v1.0 Board
SCHEMATICS (click on images to enlarge)
The Arduino diecimila compatible Freeduino serial board is a special version of the Arduino serial board designed by NKC Electronics. The board is diecimila compatible (autoreset) and includes the 13 digital pin LED for easy diagnostics and basic LED sketch execution.
First, unpack the kit
and start with the PCB.
Let’s start with the power portion of the schematic using the following parts:
| DC1 | DC power jack |
| D1 | 1N4004 diode |
| C5 | 100nF ceramic capacitor |
| C6, C7 | 47uF electrolytic capacitor |
| IC2 | 7805 5V positive voltage regulator |
| Power LED | 3mm LED |
| R2 | 330 ohm resistor |
Plug a wall plug voltage regulator (+7V to +12V). The LED lights up, indicating that the Power supply is working.
NOTE: This board is not shield friendly, as the 7805 is too tall and there is no room to install it horizontally.
If you need to use shields with this board, mount the 7805 on the bottom side of the board following the next pictures:
The result is shown with the XBee shield, Motor controller shield and NKC Electronics protoshield.
Next continue with the soldering of the RS232 components:
| X1 | DB9 female PCB adapter |
| T1 | BC547 |
| T2 | BC557 |
| D2, D3 | 1N4148 |
| C8 | 10uF electrolytic capacitor |
| R1 | 4.7K resistor |
| R3 | 1.5K resistor |
| R4 | 1K resistor |
Solder the rest of the capacitors and resistors:
| R5-R9 | 10 Kohm resistor |
| C2, C3 | 22pF ceramic capacitor |
| C1, C4 | 100nF ceramic capacitor |
Now solder the crystal, switch and the 13-pin LED:
| S1 | reset switch |
| 13 | 3mm LED |
| Q1 | 16MHz crystal |
Now solder the headers and sockets:
| ICSP | 2×3 pin male header |
| POWER | 4-pin female header |
| Analog In | 6-pin female header |
| Digital | 2 x 8-pin female header |
| IC1 | 28-pin DIP socket |
Pay special attention to the alignment of the female headers.
And finally install the ATMEGA168 MCU.
The board is ready to be used. Start Arduino0009 or Arduino0010 and load the BLINK sketch from the examples directory. Verify that ATMEGA168 is selected in Tools –> Microcontroller (MCU) and Arduino Diecimila in the Tools –> board option. Select the COM port number corresponding to the serial interface where the Freeduino serial board is connected to. Press the “Upload to I/O board” button in Arduino and the board should autoreset and complete the programming. If you selected correctly the BLINK sketch, the LED “13” must start blinking once every 2 second (0.5Hz).
