Minimal cost arduino for your projects

Sometimes you don’t want to embed your $30 arduino board into your project because it is costly and too big. Sometimes you develop a project for small-scale production so you want to save every dollar. You could buy an arduino mini pro from sparkfun but it still costs you $19. Here is a way to save money and stay small.

Modern device has RBBB, or the really bare bone board. It is a board with ATMEGA328 chip on it so it runs your projects. But it costs less, only $15 per unit. You have to assemble it though. My minimal cost arduino start from there and only costs you about $8 each so you can feel free to duplicate 10 copies of your projects without breaking your bank. Here is how:

You will use the RBBB PCB only but buy parts from else where to save money. Here’s parts:

1. RBBB PCB from Modern Device $2.4 each (if you buy 5 boards)

2. 16MHz resonator from Modern Device $0.50 (if you buy 10 of them)

3. ATMEGA328 chip from sparkfun $4.3 each without bootloader but you can flash it in 2 minutes. Here is the one with bootloader.

4. Other parts from dipmicro $1.85 per complete set. You can use this manual to select the parts or just pick the following parts: