Two accomplishments today.  First, I was able to use the Atmel 328P chip outside of the Arduino board.  What is the benefit of this?  First, cost..  The Arduino UNO is currently $25 but the Atmel 328P is only $1,86 if you buy it on eBay, and only a few dollars more if you buy it from some place else.  However, you are going to need a few more components such as a 16MHz crystal, a few capacitors, resistors, voltage regulator, wires, and something mount it on..  All told, probably another $5.  Now you won’t have the nice board, the USB to serial converter, the 3.3volts power connection (could easily use two resistors to create a voltage divider to step the 5V down).  So it is not an apple to apple comparison.  But if you want to have these chips in a lot of little projects, then you are going to have a lot more options when the price gets to the $5-$10 range instead of the $25 range.

Also, you can compact the design down to just what you need.  You have more control over the final form factor.  And this is also a good step into the world of microcontrollers in general.  Before you know it, you will be programming the entire Atmel family of chips..

So, how to get started.  There were a number of really good tutorials that I looked through.:

arduino.cc/en/Main/Standalone

arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/ArduinoToBreadboard

www.instructables.com/id/Burning-the-Bootloader-on-ATMega328-using-Arduino-/?ALLSTEPS

Here is the configuration I used to burn the boot loader onto the Atmel 328P.

To program it I just inserted it into the Arduino, downloaded the program, and then removed the Atmel 328P.

Here is the configuration I have it to run the “Blink” Example  (This is the “hello world” of arduino)

My other accomplishment today was getting the MicroChip MRF24J40MA module working with two Arduinos.  Starting out small, I have it so you can press a button on one arduino and a LED comes on the other:  (It really needs to be shown in a video.  I hope to upload one in the next few days)

Here is some more info about the module and how to use it: