Monday, May 18, 2009

Got my Seeeduino today!

I got my Arduino Duemilanove a couple months back and I love it! Since I am a beginner and I haven't had much luck using the debugger in AVR Studio (it worked for a few times and then it started crashing all the time), every time I want to try or learn something I use it because I have instant feedback using the serial connection and the built in LED.

Recently I started thinking about a project for which I need to dedicate the Arduino full time. Of course, I could buy another one or just use the Atmega168 by itself in the project. Or I could use one of the "bare board" clones, there are tons of them available (for a comprehensive list of Arduino-compatible hardware, see this awesome post on Jeff's Arduino Blog).

However, a few days ago I was looking at some of my favorite sites and I discovered that NKC electonics has an awesome deal on a Seeeduino: it originally sells for $27.50 at Seeedstudio but NKC has it for $16 + S&H! Excellent deal, it can't get any better. So, I ordered one and it arrived in a couple of days.

As soon as I got it, I started arduino-0014, and tried to load a "Hello World!" sort of app: blink an LED. Nothing happened! Then I noticed the switches on the left of the Seeeduino board and changed the PWR one from EXTernal to USB: the Power LED turned on and a couple other LEDs started to blink. OK, getting somewhere!

After I set the COM port to the correct one, I tried again to upload the app but still nothing happened. I looked at the switches a bit longer and figured the ReSeT one has to be in Auto mode and not in the default Manual mode. Changed this one and tried again: success!

Of course, I could've gotten here a lot faster if I first read the docs for the Seeeduino! :-)

Anyway, it works great and since I paid less than half the price of a new Arduino, I will use the Seeeduino in my next project. Which hopefully I'll post here soon.

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