Assembling the Dragon Rider 500 for use with the AVR Dragon

Step 17 Conclusions

Excellent! If you own an AVR Dragon you should own a Dragon Rider. I would recommend this kit to everyone!

Why do I think it's so good?

• Extremely high qualtiy PCB and parts
• I found the kit fun (even delightful) to assemble, that's always a plus
• This is the first time I've been able to use the AVR Dragon for High Voltage programming to "resurrect" a chip that I set the fuses incorrectly on. Once I had the jumpers setup correctly this was a simple process no more difficult than ISP. You just can't do it with the AVR Dragon without some type of adaptor which the Dragon Rider provides.
• The 2x5 pin headers make it easy to break-out the AVR pins to a breadboard or prototyped circuit. It also allows you to use some on-board features such as the buttons with off-board circuits at the same time.
• The price is right! You get a lot of bang for your buck. If you just want to use this to expand the ease of programming with the AVR Dragon you can pick up the PCB only for about $12 and use your own sockets, pin-headers, and shunts. That being said, if you are just starting out with AVR, the add-on kits will make learning easy and they are also extremely low-priced.
• The Dragon Rider adds a lot of protection to your delicate AVR Dragon. When used with the plexi-glass bottom it creates something of a "case" for the Dragon itself.

What do I think could be better?

• You must be cautious not to turn Switch 1 (SW1) and Switch 2 (SW2) on at the same time!!! If you are using the variable power supply and turn these switches on at the same time you could send voltage that is too high back through to the Dragon, possibly damaging it. That being said, there really isn't a good way around this unless you just have less features available. My suggestion is to make a habit of always making sure both switches are off. Only turn a switch on when you have reason to.
• I would have liked to see a 2x3 ISP connector to facility off-board ISP without disconnecting the AVR Dragon from the Dragon Rider. This being said, I believe that if you setup the Dragon Rider to program an 8-pin chip you can then build a simple adapter to plug into J2 that will allow a 6-pin ISP cable to be used for this function. See "Future Goals" below.

A big thank you to Ecros Tech for a great product! I would also like to thank Graham Davies of Ecros Tech (again) for his answers to my questions and for sending me complimentary LCD and Ribbon Cable add-on kits for evaluating and adding to this instructable.

Future Goals:
1. Post instructables on how to setup the jumpers and use various programming modes (in progress but unpublished at this time).
2. Develop and post instructable on creating and using a 6-pin ISP header to program off-board AVR chips without removing the AVR Dragon from the Dragon Rider.

Need help?
If you're interested in getting into AVR microcontrollers there is a website where you can learn more: http://www.avrfreaks.net

Comments

[thowardtf1]

A SPDT switch will alleviate the problem of both sw1 and sw2 on at the same time.