Back to Fundamentals - DIY AVR board

Tired of OOP/OOD at work? Of all these SaaS, SOA, PAAS, CQRS, DDD and other BLAH-BLAHs? Come on, just joking (-_-)
The thing is, few months ago I experienced some inexplicable desire to balance this pretty high-level and abstract stuff I usually deal with as a system architect, with something really low-level, the TRUE one if you will.
Some DIY hardware.

Let's start with Atmel AVR and Arduino as its brightest (and trendy) representative.

Arduino Uno

The original Arduino board is pretty complex to create and solder as for beginner - it has 2 sides PCB layout. I've chosen Freeduino MaxSerial (use Google) - its one-sided, no surface mount elements and has RS-232 interface (I did not found USB-to-TTL chip on local radio market, so no USB)

Freeduino MaxSerial schematics

I used laser printer method to create PCB.

PCB layout (ready to print)

Illustrated process (sorry for bad image quality - used my good old Samsung Spica as a camera)

Print templates

PCB base

Degrease

Use abrasive paper to clear the base from oxides

Base is ready

Put template  on base and apply some heat

Soften the template

And remove (carefully!)

Ferric Chloride pool

Sorry, no pictures for soldering process - it was a real disaster =)

As I have no RS-232 in my laptop I've used  USB AVR programmer (slightly hacked) to flash the Arduino bootloader

Few strokes in Arduino IDE and voilà - the sturdy base for Christmas decoration is ready =)))

That's all folks (-_-) 

See you soon