Arduino on a budget - part 3
The best-made plans... I'd hoped to build version two of Veroduino (my Arduino clone on a strip-board), using a narrower piece of strip-board than my first attempt. Alas, the new version was too narrow; if you use a crystal for the controller's oscillator you need to connect it to a couple of capacitors, and I couldn't find a workable layout in the limited space available. I decided to use a SimmStick . SimmSticks have fallen out of fashion as the USB has taken over, but they still work well and I had a suitable board from Dontronics . The SimmStick can take a 28 or 40-pin Atmel AVR micro-controller; it took an hour or so to polulate the board and check it out. I already had a motherboard which provides power and RS232 comms if required. I modified the motherboard by adding a 30-pin PCB header. That gave me access to all the lines of the SimmBus; these include the SDA and SCL signals needed for I2C, as well as Ground and the 5v supply needed by my I2C boards. I now have a ...