Good morning, all today, i'm going to try and get my cpu board my microcontroller board to work. So the first thing i need to do is fit an isp header and what i'd like to check? First, whether whether the bootloader is in there i mean, i know it won't be because manufacturers don't supply chips with arduino boot loaders. Why would they, but is there a way of checking that? Let's have a look so a two by three can't remember how you do this now. Oh, i think perhaps you do that.

Yes, a two by three header for the isp programmer: let's clean the iron and solder this in gosh, it's so dark today, july and there's absolutely no sunlight. Oh, is that ground that must be ground. It's just not it's not having it. Just all the other pins and come back to ground.

In fact, let's put this into turbo mode, get the temperature up into the 400s and solder the ground pin done so how to program the bootloader. Well, you need a programmer and i've got various ones here. Uh. Some of them really old, but i think this one was the latest one i used and it's a usb tiny isp.

If i'm not mistaken, in fact, on the back, it says: arduino micro isp. Now, where are vcc and ground so v up on the top right which looks like it is that pin one i'll have a check uh, but it's certainly the red stripe and ground is on the other side. So red stripe is vcc how's that gon na work with my board. Well, i've got five volts up there and ground down there.

I wanted to have it so that this cable came out this way, i think on the arduino nanos. It goes the other way. In fact, let's check that well, yes on here, i've got my purple wire, it's hard to see the colors, because the lighting's so bad down in this bottom left-hand corner pin one is actually the bottom right hand corner on this board. I haven't marked, pin one, but i think it's the top left-hand corner.

I think that's pin one. So that's probably the red stripe with five volts, the next wire in not entirely certain but uh, i'm pretty sure that goes that way around and so yeah. We should be able to program this micro controller, so uh. This is micro b, so i'm just gon na pull the charging cable out of my phone, which does also go to my pc.

Let's plug that in oh we've got a green light. That's my power light! I do believe so yeah that works, that's extremely bright uh. I think that's got a 1k resistor on it. Well that looks promising um, i'm not sure where the windows registered that this device - oh, i haven't, got my audio switched on.

Let's do that so, let's plug this into here again and we got the windows usb sound and the unplug sound so that all looks promising. I will now just check my device manager to see whether it can see that and uh yeah. You can see at the top office pc at mail usb devices usb tiny, so certainly my operating system can see it now. We've got to try and see if we can program in a bootloader, so under tools, we've got programmer usb tiny isp, and it's selected on that, possibly because i used that the last time i burned a bootloader which was probably a couple of years ago and burned.

Bootloader, but i don't want to do that until i've picked the correct bootloader now, i'm just wondering whether to do this as a pro mini or whether to do it as a nano, because if you do it as a nano uh, you get the there's a there's. The new nano boot loader, which is the optiboot, the smaller one, and i just think i'd rather go for that it does mean that it won't program as a pro mini. It will program as a nano, but let's do that so avr boards uh nano now uh where's the nano there we are arduino nano now. Is this going to burn the new boot loader or the old bootloader? That's an interesting one, processor.

Ah there we are so: we've got uh 18 mega 328p, an 18 mega 328p old bootloader. So i don't want the old bootloader. So i'll have this uh. The port has changed because the uh tiny isp is on com3.

So i want it as a nano with an 18 mega 328 p. 16 megahertz. Is that something we can choose, maybe they're all 16 megahertz? Maybe the nano never had an 8 megahertz variant. I think that's actually probably true.

Okay burn boot loader. Will it do anything? Let's bring up the the uh: what's this called info section, oh done burning boot loader! Well, that was quick. Has it worked um? Well, assuming then that's uh got the bootloader in it, let's unplug that and take the isp header off. So this now has a nano new type: optiboot uh, half a kilobyte, bootloader uh, okay.

So to see whether we can program it, i need five pins on there to connect it to a usb to serial adapter and one of these headers, which is the d13 link that lets me just i'll. Just put this back into the camera, because the battery in my phone is my phone being my camera is awful. I bought a cheap one on ebay and it only has about two hours juice in it. So don't want to leave that off power for too long yeah.

The link that does the d13 led i have to identify which of these two it is ah well. I think i have identified it because i can see a track running from there round to the isp header and the isp header has s clock on it and i believe s. Clock is also d13, so that's got to be the d13 led. Let's get a link in there, a two pin header in there and a five pin header in there, so a little bit more soldiering.

Let's get to this on. That gives me my d13 led, so i can do blinky. This is vcc ground and txrx and reset which will come from my oh. That's, got ta, be ground, uh, usb to serial adapter, and that lets me program.

My now boot bootloaded microcontroller board right some subtle differences in the pin assignments uh between the pro mini and my board, and that is that vcc and ground are not swapped, because i've got five volts and ground at the top, but tx and rx. I've got in the same uh sequence as this tx rx, so they're going to have to be reversed and then either dtr or rts is for my reset input. So i'll just re-jig. This we've got five volts ground, there's a switcheroo on the tx and rx and then reset on here, which goes through the differentiator capacitor into the reset circuit of the microcontroller comes from, but i've got it on dtr now.

So if i plug this into usb, this should once again light up. I will need a link on my d13 led, so first things. First, let's plug this in that's registered on my pc and the green light is on that's the power light. Let's get a link for that right.

Standard blink, sketch tools says nano 18 mega 328p. The ports changed, of course, because we're now connected to a ch340, that's com4, let's compile and upload that i'll cut out the big waiting time and come back when i'm expecting my tx and rx lights to flash. Oh, this is such a short sketch. I don't think that's going to take very long uh.

Yes, that's it and it's working, i must admit i was kind of half not hoping, but thinking i might have to diagnose this board. But i don't because that looks absolutely fine, so the crystal's obviously running uh. The led on d13 is obviously in the right place. Let's try my reset button that works fine, but it all works, which is good.

That's what i want um. I suppose i could add in a couple of eight-way connectors now and put my radio tower and dual oled and touch switch boards on and see whether this application runs on this board. That's what i should do really. Isn't it just a quick check? What if this thing has no radio tower? Will the program run? I think it will - or at least it will such that the oleds actually come on, because that would be a first step yeah, so the oleds come on.

It just doesn't receive any data. So that's fine, so i can just do the oled side of it first now these two wires here are scl and sda which go off to some. I squared c points on this board, but on my new pro minty sort of preliminary version, um they're in the right places on this connector, so i should just be able to put links on there and that should work. So, let's try that got some funny data coming in and the d13 light is flickering wildly, but that's fine.

This movement actually gives me even more confidence that the oleds are working. So i bought some of these on ebay, the other day eight-way uh female headers. So i'll get that one soldered in for the oled and touch board. Let's do that now, so a couple of links to root, scl and sda to their appropriate connectors and it's the two in a line.

It's the first two connectors it's a4 and a5 on a nano or any arduino, i suppose, okay, so that plugs into that eight-way connector. We can hook back up the uh. This is now just providing power and oh, i need to load in the appropriate program and then we should get some oled stuff yeah. I knew this would happen this board's, so small.

It just hasn't got the weight to sit on the desk because of all this bulk never mind we'll see the oleds better because they won't be quite so much in the light right. The program is oh nrf, rx oled times, 2. Ttp223. 2021.

That looks right. Everything else should be set up so i'll, just upload and compile that uh it'd be nice. If we could see the little lights on here that might take a while to compile so i'll come back when that's ready to upload. It's uploading now lots of red lots of green and it's running so we've got uh null data there.

That's interesting. The d13 light is on a lot, but that's probably because it's trying to talk to the radio tower uh, which would be the s clock on spi and there's nothing there. So, let's now solder in the other connector, the other header for the d2 led, which will show the status of the touch switch and basically finish this thing off now. I had originally put a 5 volt and ground header pin on here to provide power to the radio tab, but i then realized i didn't really need to, because the isp header has five volts and ground on it.

Of course, so i just marked them five volts and ground, so all i need to do is plug those into five volts on ground. That means the radio tower will be powered up with 5 volts. That's got the 3 volt 3.3 volt regulator for the nrf module. So that should all be good um i've got my d, i think it's d3.

Actually, the led is on and d2 is where my touch signal goes now. That comes off this pin here and goes into this last point on this eight-way connector, and so i marked that i don't know if you can see it d2, just down there on that last pin. So that's the final connection i need to make. I need a short wire well, i might as well have that one, because it's not doing anything uh.

The other thing is, i need a a pin which will take a female to a female. This end can fit on here. That's no problem, uh. Both these two pins are connected to the output of the ttp, so i just need a pin to pin to join this wire to that end.

Connector on that female header. So i think perhaps what i'll do is i'll. Just pull a pin out of that plastic carrier and try and use it as a female to female link. If it's long enough, let's poke it in there.

I think that's good! Okay, let's power it up with no rehearsals away, we go yep and that's receiving data from the shed now the the light is that led down there? Oh, yes, that's blue! Oh, that's the 0805 one, of course, isn't it and uh yeah that toggles when you toggle the touch switch now on the other end, there is the facility for a relay, so that would be toggling the relay at the transmitter end, but i just wanted to have It as a led on here so i can see that the toggling is working on the touch sensor, so yeah that all works data from the shed and coming in on the radio. I might even sit on the bench now with the radio tower, adding some weight. No, it doesn't so what next well, now that i've got a working micro controller and usb to serial uh circuits that i know are working. I can start thinking about doing my giuliano bonanno, which is essentially a nano now jlc pcb snt assembly service only put components on one side, so the ch340 will have to come onto the top side, as will any regulators that i require.

So i think my banana board is going to be a bit longer than a conventional nano, but i will try to stick to this uh two rows of 15 pins at 600 mils spacing um, i'm going to put a connector on the end here for a radio Tower well, actually not a radio tab, but the nrf board itself, so it'll be one of those two by four connectors um, which shares actually the spi signals and three of those go to the isp programming header anyway. So having that extra connector on there shouldn't be too difficult from a connection and routing point of view, but uh yeah, that's where this is going next, i'm going to build my fairly general purpose, giuliano bonanno, but for the moment that's all i intended to do today. So cheerio.