So I'm completely new to arduinos and I really don't have much electronic background, but I'm doing a project for my boyfriend for his birthday because he completely loves Doctor Who. I'm running into problems with the sound circuit, (basically all of the arduino). The instructions are here http://www.instructables.com/id/Working-Sonic-Screwdriver/ in step 7, but basically what it says is to install the Quasi-duino boot loader to the Arduino. I wish I could say I've made some progress, but quite frankly I don't even know where to begin

the instructions for that are posted here http://www.instructables.com/id/The-9-Quasi-duino-Almost-duino/?ALLSTEPS, but as I said I really haven't made much progress on that and I've been working on that step for a few days. Any advice or help (or even what I need or where to start?!) would be GREATLY appreciated!!

 

Also, I just realized that the momentary button is turning the light OFF when I push it (didn't even realize that would be a problem I would run into!), and I've already done so much work into that area that I was wondering if there was a way I could switch polarities of the button in any way? Or if I should just scrap that whole area and restart it?

 

Hey Cassandra, I checked out those websites and I'm not too sure in what part of step 7 are you stuck in? They try to be very thorough. :S

I assume you got the button and you connected it to the atmega. I'm also new to arduinos and I'm glad you posted this because it's really cool that it's possible to minimize the space.
I thought that programming the atmega wouldn't be that much of a problem. Please keep me up to date!

 

The upshot is that to program the chip you either need another Arduino or a programmer.

It's not clear from the brief read through I have had why the Quasi-duino boot loader is recommended, there are other "breadboard" 8MHz Arduino boot loaders, but in any case all loading the boot loader when used like this is doing is setting some fuses on the chip. Also why buy a chip with the Uno boot loader and then replace it? You could have just bought a blank chip.

Where abouts on the planet are you? It may be easier to see if you can get someone in your region to load the bootloader and the Sonic Screwdriver software for you.