The MarcDuino v1 is a DIY board. In most cases, you'll need to build two boards: a Master and a Slave. The two boards are identical. The only difference is the firmware that's loaded on each.

Order the materials from the materials page here. Be careful to order enough components for two boards.

Solder the components according to the silk screen and the picture above. Order is unimportant.

4 components are polarized:

- the 100 uF capacitor, vertical stripe on the side indicates the (-) pin

- the two LEDs: note where the flat side is and align to markings on the board (no flat side? See note 2 below!)

- the ATmega328p chip: position the half moon notch as shown on the board.

*WARNING* There is a second 1k resistor at the bottom left under the green LED, not shown on this picture!

- I forgot this 1k resistor on the v1.0 board, and added it back in the v1.1. Don't forget it! It's drawn on the silk screen.

*WARNING* Make sure to solder the right lead of the first 1k resistor (at the top) into the PC3 hole, past the headers!

- In the PC3 hole like in the picture above. NOT in the PC4 hole! The silk screen is confusing as it looks like it stops on the wrong hole.

I make the 3 pin wide servo blocks by using a combination of a 2 row and a single row strips

- I hold them together in place temporarily with a servo 3 pin connector plugged in while I solder.

The flat side LED marking is hard to see on the boards silk screens

- both LEDs flat sides (negative) are oriented towards the bottom of the board (towards the edge that says MarcDuino).

Some cheap Chinesium LEDs ship without a flat side or with the flat side on the wrong side (!)

- Use the shorter pin or the wider post as the indication of the flat side (negative), as shown in the diagram below.

Upload the firmware

Firmware upload is the trickiest part of the build. Follow every step carefully as explained in the Firmware Upload page.

Next steps

After you have uploaded the firmware and got the little LED blinking, you need connect your boards, install your radios, and start playing with it with R2 Touch. If you want to, you can also test the functionality of your MarcDuino without a radio nor R2 Touch by connecting it directly to a computer through a serial port as explained here.

Make 3D printed mounts

Optionally, you can also make 3D printed mounts for your boards.