Awesome! Arduino finally released a tutorial on how to bootload a chip using an Arduino board.

There have been several hacks to do this, but now they have released code to do it legit style!

The tutorial can be found here.  I played around with the setup, and successfully did it by inserting my blank chip into another an Arduino, and used a second Arduino with their code uploaded to bootload the firmware.  I discovered: <strong>1.  This is a feature available only with Arduino0018 (the latest version of the IDE).  and 2.you cannot use an ATMega168 as the chip performing the bootload.  It must be a Duemilanove with a 328 on board.</strong>

I then did it with a blank chip in a breadboard with a barebones circuit around it, and an Arduino board uploading to it.  Here’s a really blurry, really anticlimactic video of the breadboard setup doing it’s thing.  You can see once the bootloading has completed, the chip is no longer blank and begins flashing LED13.

Finally! step by step instructions on how to fabricate your own $8 hackduino on perfboard! Never again will you need to dismantle a project just to reuse an Arduino because you can’t afford the $30!

Make your Arduino circuit completely 100% custom. Add LEDs, an opAmp, or any external circuit right on the board! Half the size, and less than 1/3 of the price, this is something everyone who is serious about prototyping and installing with Arduino needs to know how to do.

Here’s the instructable, but maybe you should just check it out at instructables, because the embedding is not fantastic.