Author: Andrei
18/06/2018
We all know Arduino. There are a few models for the Arduino boards and the most known are the UNO, NANO, Mega and probably the pro mini. The one that EN msot uses for tests is the Arduino UNO board.
Now the Arduino board is an open source hardware. That means you could get the components and make yout own. This board uses the ATMega328 chip from ATMEL. What EN did was to create the abre minimum configuration for this chip, add the extra components such as the FDTI chip for progamming, the voltage regulators and a few more pins and order create a cool looking layout.

To order your boards, use PCBWay.com and select yout color.

Is time to gather the components. The circuit is quite simple. The board has the bare minimum ATMega328 circuit but with a few more things. EN wanted a double row of pins since he will use this board for a lot of tests. Having multiple pins allows you to use more jump wires at the same time.

The design was made in EasyEDA. To program the board, it has a USB mini-B connector and the FT323 chip specified before. The board can be powered with the USB and there is a 500mA fuse between the connector and the power of the board. That’s there to protect the USB port. Then the board has a switch to change between USB power or direct Vin power.

For the RX, TX and the LED connected at pin D13 or CLK, EN used white color LEDs that together with the red board, makes it look very cool. On the side, there is a SPI port with small pads compatible with and SMD NRF24 radio module. EN said he uses that module a lot and that’s why he placed that port there, just in case.

And there is the finished board. All soldered in place using both soldering paste and normal solder. The chip uses s socket so it could be removed any time.

The good thing is that is compatible with any Arduino UNO shield because the shape is still the same and the pin placement as well. EN announced on his INSTAGRAM page that there ill be a full video about this on his YouTube channel so stay tuned. It works perfect and looks so good.