Okay, it’s taken a while for me to get all the skills together, but I just created my first simple breakout board for the mega168-10-AU ( low voltage capable ) version of the mega168 chip. I have 100 ( well, 99 … I’m keeping one ) made, and have enough components to make many more. This is pretty much the lowest possible part count for an Arduino.
I just tested the first batch of them, and they work really well. By default they are programmed with the optiboot 8 bootloader running on the internal oscillator (8MHz), however since I’ve populated a 16MHz ceramic oscillator on the board you can also flash and change the fuses to use that and get twice the performance out of the chip ( at a cost of power efficiency ).
The board is the size of an old-style EEPROM chip, so easy to breadboard and has common 0.1 in spacing.
If you want one, they are $5 each and are a perfect “minimist” Arduino to embed into just about anything. 16K Flash, 1K SRAM, 512 bytes EEPROM. Can operate 0-8Mhz at 1.8V, 0-16MHz at 3.3-5V.
I’m pretty stoked at the result. Here’s the front and back of the boards:
