These little USB programmers are really helpful. I used a raw parallel port to program AVRs for a couple years, but just recently built a USB one. I made a fun little portable development board with the USB adapter, a drop-in chip socket, several LEDs, speaker, crystal socket, and a small breadboard all in a single device. I use jumpers to let me assign controller wires (MOSI, MISO, SCK, etc) to their respective pins on the MCU, so I can program MCUs with different pin configurations rapidly. (Note I used a ~$8 kit http://fun4diy.com/photos/AVRISP-mkII.jpg for the USB ISP.) I take this thing with me to/from school with me every few days and it works well because I need nothing but a USB port to continue work on whatever MCU project I'm working on! It's great for rapid development on the go. I got a lot of miles out of this board - I thought I'd share it!
15th October 2010 04:28
Scott AJ4VD wrote...
These little USB programmers are really helpful. I used a raw parallel port to program AVRs for a couple years, but just recently built a USB one. I made a fun little portable development board with the USB adapter, a drop-in chip socket, several LEDs, speaker, crystal socket, and a small breadboard all in a single device. I use jumpers to let me assign controller wires (MOSI, MISO, SCK, etc) to their respective pins on the MCU, so I can program MCUs with different pin configurations rapidly. (Note I used a ~$8 kit http://fun4diy.com/photos/AVRISP-mkII.jpg for the USB ISP.) I take this thing with me to/from school with me every few days and it works well because I need nothing but a USB port to continue work on whatever MCU project I'm working on! It's great for rapid development on the go. I got a lot of miles out of this board - I thought I'd share it!