Arduino Mega 2560 R3 - ORIGINAL ARDUINO (A000067)

Description

Arduino Mega 2560 is a microcontroller board based on the ATmega2560 (datasheet). It has 54 digital input/output pins (of which 14 can be used as PWM outputs) 16 analog inputs, 4 UARTs (hardware serial ports), a 16 MHz crystal oscillator, a USB connection, a power jack, an ICSP header, and a reset button.

It contains everything needed to support the microcontroller; simply connect it to a computer with a USB cable or power it with a AC-to-DC adapter or battery to get started. The Mega is compatible with most shields designed for the Arduino Duemilanove or Diecimila. 

• Microcontroller ATmega2560
• Operating Voltage 5V
• Input Voltage (recommended) 7-12V
• Input Voltage (limits) 6-20V
• Digital I/O Pins 54 (of which 14 provide PWM output)
• Analog Input Pins 16
• DC Current per I/O Pin 40 mA
• DC Current for 3.3V Pin 50 mA
• Flash Memory 256 KB of which 8 KB used by bootloader
• SRAM 8 KB
• EEPROM 4 KB
• Clock Speed 16 MHz

Getting Started

You can find in the Getting Started section all the information you need to configure your board, use the Arduino Software (IDE), and start tinker with coding and electronics.

• OSH: Schematics

  Arduino Mega 2560 is open-source hardware! You can build your own board using the follwing files:

  EAGLE FILES IN .ZIPSCHEMATICS IN . PDFBOARD SIZE IN .DXF

  Programming

  The Mega 2560 board can be programmed with the Arduino Software (IDE). For details, see thereference and tutorials.

  The ATmega2560 on the Mega 2560 comes preprogrammed with a bootloader that allows you to upload new code to it without the use of an external hardware programmer. It communicates using the original STK500 protocol (reference, C header files).

  You can also bypass the bootloader and program the microcontroller through the ICSP (In-Circuit Serial Programming) header using Arduino ISP or similar; see these instructions for details.

  The ATmega16U2 (or 8U2 in the rev1 and rev2 boards) firmware source code is available in theArduino repository. The ATmega16U2/8U2 is loaded with a DFU bootloader, which can be activated by:

  • On Rev1 boards: connecting the solder jumper on the back of the board (near the map of Italy) and then resetting the 8U2.
  • On Rev2 or later boards: there is a resistor that pulling the 8U2/16U2 HWB line to ground, making it easier to put into DFU mode. You can then use Atmel's FLIP software (Windows) or the DFU programmer (Mac OS X and Linux) to load a new firmware. Or you can use the ISP header with an external programmer (overwriting the DFU bootloader). See this user-contributed tutorial for more information.