June 2014 – Martyn Currey

05.12.2015 Updated the photos.

In a previous post I showed how to make your own Arduino on a breadboard. The next step is programming it.

Using an Arduino Nano to program a ATmega328P chip

There are many guides online on how to use an Arduino to program a ATmega chip, two goods ones are:
Using an Arduino as an AVR ISP (In-System Programmer)
Nick Gammon’s guide

If you google “using Arduino as a programmer” you will find most of the results are for using an UNO, very few are for the Nano. One Nano guide I did find is at Lets Make Robots This explains how to set up the Nano but it does not clearly show how to program a stand alone Atmega chip.

Breadboard Arduino / Stand Alone ATmega328P

Here is my Arduino on a breadboard. There are many online guides for creating a breadboard Arduino. All are basically the same and follow the same connections. Some use pre-programmed chips, others use blank chips. My intention was to use a new blank ATmega chip (no boot loader) and use an Arduino Nano as an ISP programmer.