Baby O 328 with FTDI

Hi, I just bought a Baby O 328 controller. I did not buy anything to program it with. I do have an FTDI adapter I’ve used to attach to another ATMega product, and an Arduino Uno. What’s the easiest way to get the thing hooked up to comething like the arduino IDE? Should I be able to use the FTDI cable?

thanks,
-Anthong

Hello.

Unfortunately, you cannot do anything with your Baby Orangutan in its present condition with just an FTDI cable. If you load an Arduino bootloader onto the board’s microcontroller, you can connect your FTDI cable to it and program it like you would an Arduino, but you will need an ISP programmer to first get the Arduino bootloader onto the board. Do you know anyone who has an AVR programmer you can borrow? If not, our USB AVR programmer is fairly inexpensive and has a few bonus features you might find useful.

I think programming the Baby Orangutan from AVR Studio with an AVR programmer is the better way to go, but if you choose to go the bootloader route and do find a way to get an Arduino bootloader on the Baby Orangutan, please let us know and we can help you configure your Arduino environment to properly program the board through your FTDI.

- Ben

thanks. I’m not afraid to buy the avr programmer… just feel dumb for not realizing it before getting the other component. Sick of paying shipping fees per item.

I have a separate arduino uno, is that something I can load the “Arduino bootloader” onto it with? I think I’ve seen those guides. I’m not completely new to arduino but it would be great if you have a recommended link of an of these steps.

also, can you tell me the recommended editor for ubuntu/linux? Arduino runs fine in it, but avr studio would not as I gather.

thanks.

Hello.

It’s certainly possible to program an Arduino to act as an AVRISP programmer (all you basically need is a sketch to properly interpret the received serial commands and issue the appropriate SPI output in response), and I seem to recall hearing about projects related to that, but I don’t have anything specific to point you to. I suggest you try googling around or posting on Arduino’s forum. If you do manage to turn your Arduino into a programmer, you could either use it in conjuction with avrdude and your favorite Linux text editor to continue programming your Baby Orangutan, or you could use it once to load the Arduino bootloader onto the Baby Orangutan, at which point you would be able to program the Baby Orangutan via its bootloader from the Arduino IDE. As I said before, you might need some help configuring your Arduino IDE to make this latter approach work, so please post here if you get stuck.

- Ben