Ghetto Programming: Getting started with AVR microprocessors on the cheap.

Step 5 Make the programming cradle

Now use the 20-pin socket and female headers to make a cradle which connects the pins from the cable to the right pins on the chip.

The first thing to do is superglue all the headers and the socket to the circuit board. That way, it's easier to solder to. You can even make an extension for the header like I did if you need more room on your circuit board.

The wiring is as follows:

Cable     ATtiny2313 PinMOSI          17MISO          18SCK           19RESET         1GND           10

Get yourself the short ATtiny2313 overview to double-check the pinouts.

And remember: you're soldering up the wires on the underneath, and it's mirror-image. It might help to mark where pin 1 is on the bottom side before soldering. (I did it wrong once. Once.)

That said, the wiring is very simple. Just pin to pin, and then connect all the header pins to the closest pins on the socket. Fortunately for me, this pre-printed circuit board from Radio Shack did the trick.

The cradle is versatile too. See the last picture for my ATtiny13 programmer cradle. I have another for an ATMega8 too.

Comments

[robot1398]

can you tell how did you connect it to the 8 pin socket

[grislyyy]

hi

Thanks a lot for this Tutorial.
Well, I have a little problem. So i dont understand wich Pins from the ppc are coming to the Attiny.

Which PPC Pin is coming to the Miso? I think its the Pin 11 but i m not shure. When Miso is 11, Mosi is 2 form the ppc?
The green cable, thats the first pin form the ppc an the 19th from the Tiny?

Pin 1 from the Tiny, the Reset, which one frome the ppc is that? An the GND???

And which pins are the + and the - frome the 5 Volt Batterie?

[enxion]

Hello every one. I've completed this board for the Atmega8 and Attiny13 neither of which worked. The atmega8 board blinks but only when plugged into the computer, probably due to my poor soldiering. Any way I'm redoing the atmega8 board and this time I've notices some thing I wasn't clear on before.

The datasheet for the 2313 says PB7 is pin 19 which should be connected to sck according to the directions. However, translating this for the atmega8 PB7 doesn't have the same properties in brackets following it in the atmega8 datasheet. What is the correct translation for atmega8?

here are the data sheets. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

http://www.atmel.com/dyn/resources/prod_documents/DOC2543.PDF
http://www.atmel.com/dyn/resources/prod_documents/doc2486.pdf

[mclovin101]

dude do you connect the 5V supply to the Vcc of the microcontroller?

[ngth]

For those who will just be using this as a programming cradle, I would recommend the use of a ZIF (Zero-Insertion-Force) socket to limit the wear and tare of your microprocessor. They're not too expensive, and one can obtain them from mouser, or digikey.... perhaps even from the manufacturer as a free sample :)

[The Real Elliot]

I looked up the price of ZIF sockets at Mouser -- couldn't find one for less that $16, which would double the cost of the project. (This _is_ ghetto.) That said, I usually don't pull the chip out of the cradle often during development. I just sit the cradle down in the middle of a breadboard and start wiring it up using the female header sockets that surround the chip. I should have posted a photo...

[mitch_feaster]

I bought this on SparkFun for $2.95. It's 28 pins and it's kind of flimsy, but it still works.

Here's mine so far: (I've ghetto'd it up even more with as much super glue as possible)

[geeklord]

Step five, Pic 4 Show off..... =D

[comwiz]

Where did you get the AVR socket? I can't find it on SparkFun's website.

[Koil_1]

try looking at MouserMouser's website. They have a lot of different prototyping componants. They also have no minimum order which is really nice.

[The Real Elliot]

The socket is just a standard DIP socket for most of the AVR's. The exceptions are the 28-pin+ ones (Mega 8 and up) which use the slightly rarer thin-DIP standard. For those, I just use two 14-DIPs stacked close to each other and it works great and saves a few pennies.

[CaffeineOverload]

Are you supposed to wire the reset to ground?

[zzag]

In case you don't have the answer yet: No, do not wire the RESET pin to ground. You temporarily connect RESET to ground to re-start the program. Suggest a momentary switch between the pin and ground.