Program
Now that you have the Metaboard built and working, lets program it. The whole point of picking the Metaboard over other kits was A. it was cheap and B. it’s compatible with the Arduino IDE. So first we need to get the Arduino Software. Get it here: http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Software. Choose the version for your OS download and install it. Since the Metaboard isn’t listed in the board list of the Arduino software we will have to add it in manually by pasting in a chuck of configuration code into boards.txt.
For Mac OS X:
The location of boards.txt in the Mac environment is located here: /Applications/Arduino.app/Contents/Resources/Java/hardware/arduino/
You can easily get there by clicking on finder, going to the top bar, clicking on “Go”, moving down to “Go to folder” (or shift+cmd+G), then pasting in the above path. Once you open the boards.txt file, scroll to the end and paste this in.
############################################################## metaboard.name=Metaboard
metaboard.upload.protocol=usbasp
metaboard.upload.maximum_size=14336
metaboard.upload.speed=19200
metaboard.build.mcu=atmega168
metaboard.build.f_cpu=16000000L
metaboard.build.core=arduino
metaboard.upload.disable_flushing=true ##############################################################
Save the file and re-open the Arduino application. You should now see the Metaboard listed at the bottom when you click on Tools -> board.
For Windows:
There are two parts to configuring the Arduino IDE to accept the Metaboard.
Part 1:
In the Arduino-0021 folder that the arduino application is in, edit Hardware -> Arduino -> Boards.txt. Scroll to the end of the file and paste this chunk of code in:
############################################################## metaboard.name=Metaboard
metaboard.upload.protocol=usbasp
metaboard.upload.maximum_size=14336
metaboard.upload.speed=19200
metaboard.build.mcu=atmega168
metaboard.build.f_cpu=16000000L
metaboard.build.core=arduino
metaboard.upload.disable_flushing=true ##############################################################
Save and close the file.
Part 2:
For windows you need to install the usbasp driver for the board. This is similar to the FTDI driver you need to install for the other arduino boards.
Download this driver and install it when windows cannot find the proper driver for the board.