The R-TEAM Robotics club chose the ATMega328 as its standard mostly because of the great open source tools and community built around the Arduino, which utilizes this microcontroller.   An added bonus is the freely available AVR Studio from Atmel.  The goal of this lesson is to give you a functioning breadboarded ATMega328 that you can load Arduino code onto and then blink an LED.

It is important for you to get some background reading done on microcontrollers, especially if you have never used one before.  I would recommend the following  articles and then make liberal use of google to fill in the rest.

Sparkfun Embedded Electronics tutorials 
What is a Microcontroller?
Arduino Examples
Introduction to Microcontrollers 

Cable Info:

FTDI Cable 5V - USB - Sparkfun
RS232 to TTL - Serial - Acroname
FTDI Basic Breakout - 5V - USB - Sparkfun

Circuit:

It is the same schematic as in lesson 1. 

Handouts:

circuit diagram
LED information
ATMega168/328 pin mapping
7805 datasheet
burning the bootloader for Arduino

Parts List:

Atmega 328
16 Mhz Crystal
220 ohm resistor
10 K resistor
22 pF capacitor (x2)
reset button
0.1 uF capacitor (optional for auto reset)