Today we are going to talk about Fritzen Proto – an Arduino-compatible circuit board that can be mounted vertically on a breadboard, without taking up much space.

I had the idea in 2016 and created a project on Hackaday.io with all the details. Basically I wanted an Arduino that didn’t take up so much space on the breadboard, unlike the Nano which leaves few “holes” left.

It is based on the same chip as the Arduino UNO, ATMEGA328P. The board even uses the same bootloader and the same USB-serial converters (CH340, FT232, etc.). You can program it via the Arduino IDE.

The image above illustrates the concept well, the board occupying just one line of the breadboard. Meanwhile, all other lines are free for you to connect whatever you need.

The schematic diagram and PCB drawing can be found at this link, they were made in Eagle CAD. You can try your luck at having the PCB produced, all the components are the same as the Arduino UNO boards.

Here is a picture of the first prototype.

How to program it?

The board has a 6-position pin bar connector on its top, for connecting a USB-serial converter. Any usb-serial converter that has a reset pin can be used: FT232, CH340, etc.

Below is a video presentation of the board, enjoy. It is in Brazilian Portuguese, but you get the idea.

For now I have no interest in reactivating the project, but if I get a lot of positive feedback and interested people, who knows. Leave a comment below, what do you think about a board like this?

Before you leave, check out another interesting project I did: a binary thermometer with 6 LEDs.