Arduiino Dieccimila

Overvieew

The Ardu uino Diecim mila is a microocontroller board

b based on the ATm mega168 (dattasheet). It hhas
14 digital input/outpu ut pins (of which
w 6 can be
b used as PW WM outputss), 6 analog iinputs, a 16 MHz
crystal osscillator, a USB
U connecttion, a powerr jack, an IC CSP header, aand a reset bbutton. It
contains everything needed
n to su
upport the miicrocontrolleer; simply coonnect it to a computer wwith
a USB caable or poweer it with a AC-to-DC
A ad
dapter or batt
ttery to get sttarted.

"Diecimiila" means 10,000 in Itallian and wass named thussly to mark tthe fact that oover 10,000
Arduino boards havee been made.. The Diecim mila is the lattest in a seriies of USB A
Arduino boarrds;
mparison witth previous versions,
for a com v see the index off Arduino booards.

Summa
ary

Microcon ntroller ATmega168

Operating Voltage V
5V
Input Vooltage (recom
mmended) 7--12 V
Input Vooltage (limitss) 6--20 V
Digital I//O Pins 14
4 (of which 6 provide PW
WM output)
Analog Input Pins 6
DC Curreent per I/O Pin
P 40
0 mA
DC Curreent for 3.3VV Pin 50
0 mA
Flash Meemory 16
6 KB (of whhich 2 KB ussed by bootlooader)
SRAM 1 KB
EEPROM M 51
12 bytes
Clock Sp
peed 16
6 MHz

Components

Power

The Ardu uino Diecim

mila can be po owered via the
t USB connnection or w with an exterrnal power
supply. The
T power so ource is selected by the PWR_SEL
P j umper: to poower the boaard from thee
USB con nnection, place it on the two
t pins closest to the U USB connecttor, for an exxternal poweer
supply, th
he two pins closest to th
he external poower jack.

External (non-USB) power can come c either from

f an AC--to-DC adappter (wall-waart) or batteryy.
The adappter can be connected by y plugging a 2.1mm centter-positive pplug into thee board's powwer
jack. Leaads from a baattery can bee inserted in the Gnd andd Vin pin headers of the POWER
connectoor. A low droopout regulattor provides improved e nergy efficieency.

The boarrd can operatte on an exteernal supply of 6 to 20 vvolts. If supplied with lesss than 7V,
however,, the 5V pin may supply less than fiv ve volts and the board m may be unstabble. If using
more than 12V, the voltage
v regullator may ov
verheat and ddamage the bboard. The rrecommendeed
range is 7 to 12 voltss.

The power pins are as

a follows:
 • VIN. The input voltage to the Arduino board when it's using an external power source (as
opposed to 5 volts from the USB connection or other regulated power source). You can
supply voltage through this pin, or, if supplying voltage via the power jack, access it
through this pin.
• 5V. The regulated power supply used to power the microcontroller and other components
on the board. This can come either from VIN via an on-board regulator, or be supplied by
USB or another regulated 5V supply.
• 3V3. A 3.3 volt supply generated by the on-board FTDI chip. Maximum current draw is
50 mA.
• GND. Ground pins.

Memory

The ATmega168 has 16 KB of flash memory for storing code (of which 2 KB is used for the
bootloader). It has 1 KB of SRAM and 512 bytes of EEPROM (which can be read and written
with the EEPROM library).

Input and Output

Each of the 14 digital pins on the Diecimila can be used as an input or output, using pinMode(),
digitalWrite(), and digitalRead() functions. They operate at 5 volts. Each pin can provide or
receive a maximum of 40 mA and has an internal pull-up resistor (disconnected by default) of
20-50 kOhms. In addition, some pins have specialized functions:

• Serial: 0 (RX) and 1 (TX). Used to receive (RX) and transmit (TX) TTL serial data.
These pins are connected to the corresponding pins of the FTDI USB-to-TTL Serial chip.
• External Interrupts: 2 and 3. These pins can be configured to trigger an interrupt on a
low value, a rising or falling edge, or a change in value. See the attachInterrupt() function
for details.
• PWM: 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, and 11. Provide 8-bit PWM output with the analogWrite() function.
• SPI: 10 (SS), 11 (MOSI), 12 (MISO), 13 (SCK). These pins support SPI
communication, which, although provided by the underlying hardware, is not currently
included in the Arduino language.
• LED: 13. There is a built-in LED connected to digital pin 13. When the pin is HIGH
value, the LED is on, when the pin is LOW, it's off.

The Diecimila has 6 analog inputs, each of which provide 10 bits of resolution (i.e. 1024
different values). By default they measure from ground to 5 volts, though is it possible to change
the upper end of their range using the AREF pin and some low-level code. Additionally, some
pins have specialized functionality:

• I2C: 4 (SDA) and 5 (SCL). Support I2C (TWI) communication using the Wire library
(documentation on the Wiring website).

There are a couple of other pins on the board:

 • AREF. Reference voltage for the analog inputs. Used with analogReference().
• Reset. Bring this line LOW to reset the microcontroller. Typically used to add a reset
button to shields which block the one on the board.

See also the mapping between Arduino pins and ATmega168 ports.

Communication

The Arduino Diecimila has a number of facilities for communicating with a computer, another
Arduino, or other microcontrollers. The ATmega168 provides UART TTL (5V) serial
communication, which is available on digital pins 0 (RX) and 1 (TX). An FTDI FT232RL on the
board channels this serial communication over USB and the FTDI drivers (included with the
Arduino software) provide a virtual com port to software on the computer. The Arduino software
includes a serial monitor which allows simple textual data to be sent to and from the Arduino
board. The RX and TX LEDs on the board will flash when data is being transmitted via the FTDI
chip and USB connection to the computer (but not for serial communication on pins 0 and 1).

A SoftwareSerial library allows for serial communication on any of the Diecimila's digital pins.

The ATmega168 also supports I2C (TWI) and SPI communication. The Arduino software
includes a Wire library to simplify use of the I2C bus; see the documentation on the Wiring
website for details. To use the SPI communication, please see the ATmega168 datasheet.

Programming

The Arduino Diecimila can be programmed with the Arduino software (download). For details,
see the reference and tutorials.

The ATmega168 on the Arduino Diecimila comes preburned with a bootloader that allows you
to upload new code to it without the use of an external hardware programmer. It communicates
using the original STK500 protocol (reference, C header files).

You can also bypass the bootloader and program the ATmega168 through the ICSP (In-Circuit
Serial Programming) header; see these instructions for details.

Automatic (Software) Reset

Rather then requiring a physical press of the reset button before an upload, the Arduino
Diecimila is designed in a way that allows it to be reset by software running on a connected
computer. One of the hardware flow control lines (DTR) of the FT232RL is connected to the
reset line of the ATmega168 via a 100 nanofarad capacitor. When this line is asserted (taken
low), the reset line drops long enough to reset the chip. Version 0009 of the Arduino software
uses this capability to allow you to upload code by simply pressing the upload button in the
Arduino environment. This means that the bootloader can have a shorter timeout, as the lowering
of DTR can be well-coordinated with the start of the upload.
This setup has other implications. When the Diecimila is connected to either a computer running
Mac OS X or Linux, it resets each time a connection is made to it from software (via USB). For
the following half-second or so, the bootloader is running on the Diecimila. While it is
programmed to ignore malformed data (i.e. anything besides an upload of new code), it will
intercept the first few bytes of data sent to the board after a connection is opened. If a sketch
running on the board receives one-time configuration or other data when it first starts, make sure
that the software with which it communicates waits a second after opening the connection and
before sending this data.

Physical Characteristics

The maximum length and width of the Diecimila PCB are 2.7 and 2.1 inches respectively, with
the USB connector and power jack extending beyond the former dimension. Three screw holes
allow the board to be attached to a surface or case. Note that the distance between digital pins 7
and 8 is 160 mil (0.16"), not an even multiple of the 100 mil spacing of the other pins.