Arduino ISP

*** UPDATE ***
I mistakenly added the wrong 2x3 header. It's not a 0.1" spacing. I've corrected it and added a few LED's that you can wire up as per the Arduino ISP sketch. look for v0.2 on the board.
***End UPDATE

Completed, write up here.

For programing tiny 85 and 84 with Arduino, read the high low tech article it'll get you there fast.

Most people I imagine start with playing with AVRs via the Arduino community. Unfortunately moving from your easy to use Arduino to a bare chip isn't easy. It requires a programmer, and those can be as little as a couple of dollars on ebay for a usbtinyisp or avrisp clone. I have a nifty Arduino with breadboard mounted on a piece of Plexiglas that is great for attiny development, especially using attiny85's since the Arduino has power, and I can use it as programmer. Most starter kits come with similar setups, so alot of people have them. It's a pain to setup, and the more wires the more chances to fail miserably. and disconnecting to rapidly test is a little painful.

For the chip side of things I've ordered a few pixie85's and pixie2313 boards. so I'll have the ICSP header broken out. Adafruit has a ICSP breadboard adapter and a 6" 2x3 idc cable... for all of 3 bucks for the set. You'll need some thing similar.

Scouring the internet the solution to my woes seemed to hack a 6 pin IDC cable to use the arduinoISP and an ICSP connector. Sound good but still one of those what pins do I use moment. Adding to the complexity the UNO requires you to disable the auto reset for the serial. This requires a 10uf cap between reset and gnd. Way too much to remember every time. 

The solution is obviously a shield. Unfortunately all the ones I've found already designed are for chip sockets. and we fairly expensive for what i wanted, a cheep, easy to setup programmer board that I could give away.

So the next installment in PCB Design is the ArduinoISP header shield. The LED's are optional, they hook up with wire from "D7-D9" on the back of the board. That gives activity, error, and heartbeat. It didn't add to the price so why not. Also it the cutout on the right so that pin 9 should be exposed.

These are being ordered next week some time. So figure at the end of september I should have them tested.

A simple square inch design that straddles the arduino. I finished the design today. for the uno you need a cap. older boards might need a 120 ohm resistor, though the cap might work too.

It's a bout 5 bucks for the 3 boards. Cheap enough to give away at parties.

OSH park buys

I bought some more boards off of OSH Park. I found them helpful. Only one was my own, and that was based off of another I found but it was very big and big costs money.

LED Simple

My design but I was inspired by Greg's LED board. For a beginner or for teaching that is a better board. It allows visualization. But at 5 bucks a piece someone that has a little more understanding of electronics might like to spend less and get a little more bang.

I have a friend trying to get into micro controllers and these short cut boards can be the difference between learning or tossing a bread board across the room. I also wanted to use these on the edge of a bread board connected directly to either a 74595 or Port D of a tiny 2313/4314. So I added 2 ground pads in the upper corners so i don't have to populate the ground pad. It was a 10 minute board, the routing could be better. These are cheep, so I'm defiantly going to revise this a bit more maybe do the resistors vertical next to the header. the header is going to be slimmed down to 8 pins, the "floating" ground pin makes more sense to me, for versatility. A 4 Led version would be nice too. Also i can see a female header and rubber feet being a good fit as well.

The other boards:

Pixie85 and Pixie2313 Just simply icsp jacks with attached chips. Removes one step and a lot of little wires. That's a win win.

Sturdy Pot Adapter. Simply a briliant way to add a big pot to a bread board. I have huge fingers. I bought 9. that were 1.80 for 3. Simply awesome, every starter kit needs these.