{"id":203,"date":"2009-02-21T01:12:33","date_gmt":"2009-02-21T06:12:33","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-02-04T00:01:30","modified_gmt":"2011-02-04T05:01:30","slug":"usbtinyisp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/?p=203","title":{"rendered":"USBTinyISP"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I got my Adafruit<\/a> USBTinyISP<\/a> AVR programmer\/SPI Interface\/USB Bitbang Device kit today, and was compelled to immediately assemble and test it. The USBTinyISP is an excellent product; it is considerably cheaper than the official Atmel AVR programmer, just as functional, and supports a fellow qualified hobbyist<\/a>. I’ve been meaning to pick up my own AVR programmer for a while, as having a programmer and a stock of cheap microcontrollers (I also recently picked up half a dozen adorable ATTiny13<\/a> chips to use with it to give my SmartLEDs idea<\/a> a shot) enables all kinds of cool projects, that do not involve “find one of the programmers on campus” or “Use the department’s Arduino Dieciemilia<\/a> that I haven’t returned.”
\nThe USBTinyISP comes as a very nice kit, which includes all the component parts including a nice case and well-made PCB.
\n\"usbtinyispparts_small.jpg\"
\nIn the picture, in addition to the included parts, you can see my trusty Xytronic 379 Soldering Station<\/a>, for which I have nothing but praise (if you think you need one of those classic blue Weller WES51 stations, you really need one of these, its a better station and costs half as much). In the left of the frame you can see my Leatherman Wave, which I cooed about<\/a> a few days ago. It just happened to be in the picture, I use an ancient pair of thin-profile pliers (now sold as the Xcelite 378, highly, highly recommended) I inherited from my mother when I am working on electronics at home.
\n\"usbtinyispalmostdone_small.JPG\"
\nI consider myself reasonably competent with a soldering iron, and it took me a little under an hour to go from holding a mailer pouch to programming a chip, with no fuckups in between, which speaks well for the quality of the instructions<\/a>, the kit, and the thinking that went into them. There are a few interesting quirks in the design; several resistors mount vertically to the PCB, the large electrolytic capacitor is intentionally mounted so it rests on top of the TTL buffer. These are both space-saving measures, and anyone who has ever seen most of the things I throw together on perfboard knows I have a high esteem for nifty tight designs.
\nUsing the completed programmer is just the same as all the other models of AVR programmer. For software I use AVRDude<\/a>, since it is well-supported on all common platforms. Below is a shot of my first successful program (or actually, readout) of a chip.
\n\"attiny13prog_small.JPG\"
\n(closeup)
\n\"attiny13bread_small.jpg\"
\nThat tiny black thing on the breadboard surrounded by the brightly colored wires is one of the aforementioned ATTiny13 chips; I paid $1.95ea for those, and it really is an entirely capable little microcontroller. The incessant march of technological progress never ceases to amaze me. Sometime soon I’ll need to make a little target board that can socket the ATTiny13s and has a plug for the 6-pin connector so I don’t have to muck about with loose wires every time. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I got my Adafruit USBTinyISP AVR programmer\/SPI Interface\/USB Bitbang Device kit today, and was compelled to immediately assemble and test it. The USBTinyISP is an excellent product; it is considerably cheaper than the official Atmel AVR programmer, just as functional, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,37,1,10,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers","category-diy","category-electronics","category-general","category-objects","category-oldblog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}