ATMEGA328P-PU with Arduino Bootloader - Uno

After purchasing many components from Virtuabotix, I recently had the opportunity to know this company a little better.I purchased a couple of these ATMEGA328-PU and I was in the process of building my first Bareduino328 Plus, but the voltage regulators that I had purchased somewhere else were faulty (they overheated when connected to a 9v battery and produced virtually no output, almost zero volts). I sent an email to Virtuabotix to inquire about the best match for the voltage regulator that they used in their demos, and within minutes Joseph Dattilo (CEO of Virtuabotix) replied with a much better answer than I was expecting: he confirmed that the model I indicated should work, but also mentioned that he could make it available on their site just to help me with my project. Within minutes, they had the perfect voltage regulator available, and for an excellent price too.It is not very common to receive courteous and effective assistance these days, but it is even less common to experience this kind of niceness and competency at once in a single person and company. To me, it is almost more important than the product itself.BTW: To date, I have purchase the following products from Virtuabotix, and they all receive 5 stars from me. Their products are very cheap, but of excellent quality too!Virtuabotix Two SG90 9 Gram Micro-servosVirtuabotix MMA7361 Three Axis Accelerometer ModuleVirtuabotix DHT11 Digital Temperature/Humidity SensorFully assembled Arduino Compatible Prototyping ShieldATMEGA328P-PU with Arduino Bootloader - Uno

These work great, with the boot-loader installed. No need for a special hardware programmer if you have a 28 pin Arduino Uno board, or compatible. No need for special wiring, and ISP code.I took out the chip from the UNO, placed one of these chips in, USB worked well, installed the sketch. Took the chip out, put it in my standalone board with hand wired 16 MHz Xtal oscillator and it worked the first time. So, a servo controller for about $4 including Xtal and parts, to control 7 servos with all the analog inputs was working in minutes. This is cheep, and runs any sketch, with any library. You do not need to spend time to write "special" code for a unique chip like the ATtiny. I plan to put a "zero insertion" socket on my UNO board just to program these. No need for special drivers, or hardware. It would make a great backup if your Arduino stops working (just put one of these ATMEGA328P-PU /w Boot-loader in, and it's fixed.I have been programming ATtiny chips, but it's very limited, the sketches must be tailored for the tiny, and few library's work on them. I resorted to using assembly code, which takes more time, and not much code to barrow from on the net. So, if you don't need the super low power, and smaller size of the ATtinyXX series, use these ATMEGA328P-PU /w Boot-loader.Beginners will love this!

Great product, decent price, but i have one complaint, mine did not come with a bootloader installed on it. I had to learn how to do it and figured it out, its not too tedious, but would have saved me a lot of trouble if it came pre installed. Good product though.

If you want to build an Arduino circuit without using an expansion board, get this chip. I built the circuit using an expansion board first, to make sure my design and software worked. Then I built my circuit without all the extras, programmed the chip, and everything worked.

I ordered these because I did not want to deal with the hassle of boot loading, however they do not appear to have arrived boot loaded. I dropped this in directly to my Uno and was not able to upload blink. I put back in the original chip and everything worked fine. I am going to attempt to bootload these to try to salvage something useful.Other recent reviewers seem to have the same problem. If you are thinking of buying these, I would recommend against it.UPDATE:I was able to successfully bootload these and got them working, confirming that they did not come boot loaded. I followed the following tutorial:http://3g1l.com/blog-burn-bootloader-blank-atmega328atmega328p-arduino-unoI did have to use the oscillator which I believe means someone attempted to bootload them before.

Edit: Ok, I'll give these another star because they do work... once you install a bootloader. Fired up Optiloader and successfully burned them. Now I can upload "Blink" and whatever other sketches I want with no trouble. So, the chips themselves work, but as far as having a bootloader "preinstalled" they're a bust.Original review:Order three, received three, but none of them seem to work.The Arduino Uno is recognized in the device manager, but the IDE cannot communicate with the board with these chips installed. The RX light flashes twice when attempting to burn a sketch, and then it does nothing. The reset button does not work, or produce any noticeable effect, either.The chip is installed the correct direction, the board mode is set to Uno, and the serial port is correct. Everything works if I remove the new chip and plug the original chip back in. They are the same part number, ATMega328P-PU, so there shouldn't be any problem, assuming the bootloader on these chips is working correctly.After a bit of troubleshooting, I suspect the bootloader is either non-functional or nonexistent on these chips. I'll give burning a bootloader a try before I pronounce the chips DOA, of course, but having to burn a bootloader kind of defeats the whole purpose of buying them with a bootloader "installed."

Good price, no issues in using them with my actual arduino-made boards. Everything I needed from them. Would be 5 star if it shipped in better anti-static packaging.