SparkFun
Tiny AVR Programmer
The ATtiny45 and 85 are a couple of really cool little MCUs but did you know you can program them in Arduino? That’s right, now you can shrink your Ard...
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The ATtiny45 and 85 are a couple of really cool little MCUs but did you know you can program them in Arduino? That’s right, now you can shrink your Arduino projects down to “tiny size” by moving your code straight over to these small but capable ICs. The standard method for programming the ATtiny ICs involves a breadboard, lots of jumper wires and a hardware programmer, but David Mellis over at MIT Media Lab has simplified the process by laying out this handy USB programmer.
The Tiny AVR Programmer plugs directly into your USB port and provides a programming socket for the ATTiny45 and 85. Just slot an ATtiny with a DIP footprint into the socket, plug the programmer into your USB port and start up the Arduino IDE. After installing the proper board definitions, you simply program it the same way you would any other Arduino board. The programmer even breaks out the IC pins to female headers so you can easily prototype around the ATtiny without pulling and plugging it over and over. There are two ISP headers that have also been broken out so you can use the programmer of solder in a 6-pin header for other AVR microcontrollers!
Note: You’ll need to install the USBTinyISP drivers if you don’t have them yet, you can find them in the documents below!
Documents:
Jargon buster
Plain-language definitions for the technical terms used above.
- AVR
- AVR is a family of 8-bit microcontrollers (made by Microchip, formerly Atmel) used in many classic Arduino-style boards such as the Uno and Nano. They are widely supported but older, which can be a limit for memory- or speed-intensive tasks.
- Headers
- Rows of connector contacts on a fixed pitch (commonly 2.54 mm) used to link a board to a breadboard, jumper wires, or another board. They come as male pin headers and female socket headers; when a module ships with pre-soldered headers it can be used straight away, whereas bare pads require soldering the pins yourself.
- IDE
- Short for Integrated Development Environment, a program used to write, run and manage code. It matters because some learners prefer a traditional coding workspace instead of a guided notebook-style lesson.
- ISP
- In electronics, ISP usually means In-System Programming, a way to load firmware onto a microcontroller while it stays on the board (often via an ICSP header), or an Image Signal Processor, hardware that turns raw camera sensor data into usable images and offloads the main CPU. The surrounding context shows which meaning applies.
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