ISP USBtiny for a total beginner

USB AVR Programmer and SPI interface. Adafruit's USBtinyISP.

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perihelionvfx
 
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Jan 09, 2012 9:25 pm

ISP USBtiny for a total beginner

Post by perihelionvfx »

Let me start by saying I love this site and the products here. I have ordered about 10 kits on here , they all work great and I had no trouble.

I ordered and built an USBtiny kit yesterday. I went through the tutorial and there are a few things that frankly have me confused. Excuse my ignorance, I have only been into electronics for about two months.

One.
You say that the 2 resistors should be left off and jumpered if this is not a spoke POV. So I did that. you did not explain what the difference with leaving them on or off really does.

Two.
You provide about 10 pictures on your tutorial of the back side of soldered pins being snipped off , something that is a no-brainer, but you do not provide even a single photo of hooking up the 6/10 pin header to a breadboard with an actual Atmel chip. I understand that I can look at a schematic and figure it out for the various chips , but I for one would have been so much better off if I could see a picture of an actual setup. I looked at every help page and it does not exist as far as I can tell. The only thing I found was a reference offsite to evil mad scientist and a Flickr page.

I have been told that I need a pull up resister on my reset pin , I have been told I should power my chip seperately... I am totally lost. I have the ISP talking to AVRDUDE and it works, but nothing I have done can get the chip to be recognized. I would actually pay money to see a tutorial on how to hook this damn thing up to a chip and make it work.

Can SOMEONE please point me to a tutorial or an idiots guide to using this programmer?

Thanks

adafruit
 
Posts: 12151
Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2006 4:21 pm

Re: ISP USBtiny for a total beginner

Post by adafruit »

the programmer is sold as a programmer, its not intended to be an AVR programming tutorial - that is a massive undertaking as every AVR chip family has different wiring! most people use the programmer for arduinos - where the header is already attached

google for AVR programming tutorials, or purchase a book on AVR development and look at the EMSL page, its very good! only 2 months experience is essentially nothing - that means you need to spend a lot more time getting up to speed - not everything will be handed to you on a plate!

perihelionvfx
 
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Jan 09, 2012 9:25 pm

Re: ISP USBtiny for a total beginner

Post by perihelionvfx »

I wasn't asking you to teach me assembly language. I got it working anyway , turns out my problem was that I needed a crystal on my programmer board. Now instead of a rc=-1 I have a "Device signature = 0x1e910a" . If I knew what I was doing I probably wouldn't be buying a kit on the internet.

adafruit
 
Posts: 12151
Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2006 4:21 pm

Re: ISP USBtiny for a total beginner

Post by adafruit »

an AVR book will teach you a lot more than programming, it will also teach you about fuses, crystals, clocks, powering, etc. All

it sounds like the programmer works, its talking to the chip and getting a signature - you just need to spend a little more time hacking on it! :)

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