ATmega168A (ATmega168) Development Kit

Description

The ATmega168A Development Kit is our bestselling kit. It contains everything you need for a basic Atmega168a circuit and the 28 pin AVR development board is really quite amazing (well we think so 🙂 ).

The board measures 127 x 94mm (5″ x 3.7″), is made of 1.6mm FR4 and has clean routed edges. It has 6 mounting holes and conforms to the large-size protostack form factor. This allows it to be stacked with other large, medium and small protostack boards.

The copper (top and bottom) has a thickness of 1oz per sqr foot and the GND and VCC power rails have a width of 50mil (top) and 60mil (bottom). This allows plenty of current to get through with very little track heating. The power rails are routed right throughout the board, making it easier to add your own circuits. The solder pads are quite large and are treated with lead free HASL, making it easy to solder components in place. All holes are through plated.

On the left hand side (holding it so the power supply is top left) you will find:

• The power connector (many options to choose from)
• Reset switch
• 10 pin ISP connector
• Dual row area

The board has been designed so each of these components sit flush with the edge of the board. This allows for easy access, especially when dealing with a board stack.

The power supply area is extremely flexible. For instance you can:

• Use a wide variety of connectors. We discuss 3 in the User’s Guide but there are plenty more
• You can bring unregulated power to the board then regulate it down, or just bring regulated power to the board,
• You can power the microcontroller with anything from 2.7 to 5.5 Volts,
• You can use IGO (eg L7805) or GOI (eg LD1117) style voltage regulators,
• You can optionally put a diode in to protect against reverse polarity,
• You can optionally add a PPTC resettable fuse to protect your circuit,
• You can optionally include an power LED,
• You have quite a bit of freedom with capacitor selection,
• You can optionally solder a CR2032 battery holder onto the board, and
• You can optionally power the board through a USB programmer and the ISP connector (6 or 10 pin).

The User’s Guide covers all these options in section 4.6.

The board has a large prototyping section on the right hand side. In fact it covers just under half the board area. The prototyping area has a breadboard style layout and as noted above, the power rail are routed throughout this area.

Aside from the board, the kit also contains the microcontroller, the power supply parts and a range of other components needed to create a basic AVR circuit. Being a through-hole kit it is easy enough for a beginner to use, and the User’s Guide has detailed instructions.

Whilst many AVR programmers will work with this board, we recommend the USBASP AVR Programmer.

Included in each Kit