Already Compact Arduino Nano Scaled-Down Into a Breadboard Friendly Chip

The new Dily3217 is a breadboard friendly Arduino compatible development board that is easy to integrate with more or less the same functionality as the Nano. Powered by a very small Atmel AVR chip, the Dily3217 copies virtually all the features of the already compact Arduino Nano into a board that is smaller than the ATmega328P itself.

Designer Albert van Dalen explains how a powerful member of the ATtiny series with large memory and hardware UART became the motivation behind the Dily3217.

“…Previously, the ATtiny chips don’t have enough memory and you could not debug them well because they don’t have a UART. Then, I discovered the ATtiny3217; it has been released in 2018. The ATtiny3217 has the most memory (32k/2048) and I/O pins (21) of the ATtiny series. And because of the QFN-24 package, the chip is extremely small. This chip is small and has about the same features as the ATmega328P. Because the chip is so small I immediately came up with the idea to make a narrow DIL24 design: the Dily3217.”

ATtiny3217 has the same 32 kilobytes program memory and over 2 kilobytes of SRAM just like the ATmega328P found in the Nano. Like other AVR MCUs, the 3217 also has GPIO pins, 21 in number operating at 5 volts, multiplexed for analog and digital functions.

In contrast to the Nano, the DL3217 uses an FTDI header for serial communication instead of an onboard USB support, and programming it via the Arduino IDE requires the Spence Konde’s mega TinyCore package.

Some features of the DIL3217 board include:

• Atmel ATtiny3217
•  Preloaded Bootloader Optiboot
• Available 8-bit ADC in addition to the 10-bit DAC
• FTDI connector
•  Internal 20MHz oscillator clocked @ 5 V
• Power and Status LEDs
• Reset buttons
• Pin-out is direct and straight forward
• 1.8V to 5.5V voltage supply with an optional voltage regulator for supply more than 5.5V

With almost the same set of features as the Nano, the less than 300mm squared Dily3217 is not only space-saving but also breadboard compatible. The Dily3217 effectively converts the microcontroller unit into a breakout that is breadboard friendly to compensate for not being available in a through-hole version.

More about the Dily3217 including how to enable the IDE support can be here. The 3217 is not out for sale yet, but you can reach out to van Dalen through his website if you are interested. 

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