I’m not new to Arduino, but new to Makerbuino. I soldered everything up and it works great. I do have a few questions though.
What bootloader is ATMega flashed with? Is it a special bootloader? I assume the ATMega that came with the kit was flashed perhaps with a special bootloader and/or with a special sketch. If I was to replace the ATMega chip down the road, what would I need to flash a new blank ATMega chip with in order to get it to work in the MakeBurino?
How does the MakeBurino flash games from the SD? I only know how to flash from the Arduino IDE. I am familiar with reading a writing to an SD, SPI, I2c etc… but I didn’t know that you could flash from an SD.
Any insight would be appreciated. I’m just trying to understand how it works.
By the way, my build turned out great and I really like the way it looks. Well worth the time and money in my opinion.
The buttons are little noisy and the menu sketch needs debounce added. Once I figure out what scripts are being used, I’ll modify the menu script and add debounce to the buttons.
If you will buy new Atmega chip, you will have to flash the bootloader. You can find the link somewhere in the forum. I did it my self. Depending on the way you are going to flash it, do not forget to set correct fuse and lock bits. Maker buino, Flash games from sd card to eeprom.
MAKERbuino is using a special bootloader that was based on optiboot (a bootloader that Arduino boards use).
Yes, you can flash programs from an SD card just as you would flash it via ISP or TTL.
ATmega328 is self-programmable, meaning that it can read a stream of data from an SD card (i.e. a HEX file stored on an SD card) and modify its own flash memory.
The bootloader is the part of the flash memory that is not edited and is responsible for self-programming of the microcontroller.