Arduino TIps & Tricks

How to bootload  atmega 328P  using Arduino Uno board as ISP?

 In situations when you accidently fry an atmega 328P chip on your arduino board you will have to replace it with a new chip. When you would search for this chip online you would find it selling as atmega328P and atmega 328P with optiboot. The one with the bootloader preinstalled is generally priced 50 to 100 INR more then the other one. If you choose to buy the one with optiboot , you can put it on your arduino board as soon as you receive it. But if you chose to go for the first option you will need to bootload it first. In this post I will share with you how to bootload an IC  by using an arduino board as an ISP (In system programmer). However this can be done by using a dedicated programmer like USB asp or any other programmer.

STEP-1: Preparing the IDE and Arduino

• Connect the arduino uno to the computer
• Check if the right Com is selected on the arduino IDE.Tools>SerialPort>ComX
• Check if the right board is selected by going to  Tools>Boards>ArduinoUno
• Go to the Arduino IDE >examples>ArduinoISP and upload it to your Arduino board.
• select arduino as ISP by going  to Tools>Programmer>Arduino as ISP.

STEP-2: Making the bare minimum circuit on a breadboard.

Place the IC to be bootloaded on a breadboard and make the connections as shown in the pictures below.

STEP-3:
Go to tools then click on burnbootloader. If you followed eveything correctly.You will see the following messages

So now you can use this IC on any arduino board and upload codes to it using the COM port on computer.