Episode: 2660
Title: HPR2660: Installing a bootloader on an Arduino
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2660/hpr2660.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 07:09:16

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This in HPR episode 2660 entitled installing a bootloader on an Arduino.
It is hosted by Ken Fallon and in about 7 minutes long and carrying an explicit flag.
The summary is, can use an Arduino to load a bootloader on an Arduino hello.
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Hi everybody, my name is Ken Fallon, and you're listening to another episode of Hacker
Public Radio.
Today we're going to be burning a bootloader to an Arduino.
The reason I'm recording this show is that I did the first one without a problem because
I followed the instructions.
The other two was a little bit later in the evening and I was beat my head against
the wall and could not figure out what was going on.
This episode is actually targeted at myself in 6 months time when I definitely do this
again.
Warning that I am no expert here when it comes to this sort of stuff, so I'm just basically
learning myself.
I had ordered three Arduino unos or clones of for a tenor from one random Chinese site.
There's lots of them out there.
They came without their headers soldered on, but thanks to Mr X's episodes we all know
how to solder now.
I soldered those on.
Tip, the headers for the digital in and digital out.
I put on the bottom and the headers for the programming interface I figured would be
handy to put on the top, that way they'll fit very nicely into a breadboard, so that's
kind of cool.
I learned quite a lot about desoldering there, just hint to yourself.
The first one of these I followed some instructions and got a programed without a problem.
Then subsequently I tried to do it again and it failed and it failed with the other two
as well, so I had no idea what was going on and what was the problem.
I slept in it overnight and yeah, sometimes you just have to walk away from it and then
I realized I made one mistake and that was not loading the sketch properly.
Now I will kind of put in a link to learn.sparkphone.com forward slash tutorials, forward slash installing
dash and dash Arduino dash bootloader, excellent, excellent little tutorial there.
It basically tells you what a bootloader is, a little bit of a program similar to a bias
they say for either loading a program or running a program, so you pretty much need
this.
There are dedicated programmers out there that you can use or you can use as using the in-circuit
serial programming ICSP using a working Arduino, so if you've got an Arduino, in my case,
I've got an Arduino Uno and I want to program three Arduino nanons or clones of, then
this is the instructions that you should follow.
What you will need is I have some tables, let me see what they're called, and they've
got a pin on one side and the female thingy on the other side, so male and one side female
on the other.
It just happens to be the way the pins are on my thing.
You obviously need a way of connecting wires from the Arduino into the nano, in my case,
so the one that you're trying to program into the one that you're programming with.
Okay, so the pin connections vary between device, so there's a helpful guide on that page
that I link you to, but basically you put five volts to pin two, ground to pin six, so basically
let me see, pin 13 goes to, sorry, digital 13 goes to, well, if we look at it from the
point of view of the header, so we're looking at the header on the thing you're trying to
program, there's six of them, and integrated circuits, they pin, find pin one as labeled.
It's usually, and set that to the top, left hand corner, and then the pin numbers also
for chips, as well, goes anti-clockwise around or counterclockwise.
So top left, so north west, then west, then south west, southeast, east, and north east,
so if you can get the idea.
Pin one, two, three, four, five, six, so that's what it'll be referring to.
So pin one is in the top, left, and that is goes to digital pin 12, pin two goes to digital
pin 13, pin three goes to digital pin 10, pin four, that one is on the bottom right hand
corner, goes to ground, pin five goes to digital 11, and pin six goes to five volts.
Okay, now once you have that done, you need to go to open open R and you go file examples,
so find Arduino, ISP, and then you plug in USB cable to the one that you're programming
with.
So the one that you're trying to program is now dangling off the main one, and you're
programming with that cable is plugged in, and then you press the upload button, once that's
you go to burn root loader, and that should be it.
You want to make sure that you're this set to whatever board is the target board.
In my case, it's the Arduino, and the port is USB, blah blah blah, but that's what should
work.
So three things you need.
You need connections all right, all correct, you need to power the main board, you need
to load the example sketch for programming Arduino dot ISP, and you need the programmer
set to Arduino as an ISP.
So those three things, all of them are detailed in this page that I'm going to send you
to.
So file examples 11 Arduino ISP, and then come port, you set that to the right come port,
upload, you code to turn it into blah, and then you set your board to Arduino Uno, and
then you programmer is Arduino ISP as an ISP, and then you do the boot loader.
Okay, so that's it.
How difficult was that?
Time machine go back to myself last night, slap myself about the face, and that's the
answer.
The answer is, the answer is or TFM, I guess, to myself.
Okay, anyway, that was it, that was today's shows, not a lot to it, but kind of really
cool now, because I've gotten from having one Arduino working to having four, so that's
some projects coming up, so we'll see how that goes.
Okay, tune in tomorrow for another exciting episode of Hacker Public Radio.
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