How to program a AVR (arduino) with another arduino

Step 2 Making the mega-isp programmer on a breadboard

There are two ways to connect your Arduino to program a chip.

You can plug your avr chip to a breadboard and connect 5v and GND to the respective pins (check the datasheet!) + a pullup resistor to reset and wire pins from you arduino to the chip.
These are the lines on Arduino and their function
13 - SCK
12 - MISO
11 - MOSI
10 - RST (Reset)

Or you can make a 2x3pin ISP header that you can plug into a board that provides one (another arduino board).
The pinout for the ISP header is on the third image

There are 3 leds to indicate the status of the programmer.
pin 9 - blue led - its the hearbeat of the programmer.
pin 8 - red led - indicates an error
pin 7 - green led - indicates that the programming is taking place
(i was lazy so i didn't match the colors in my setup)

Here are the drawings made in Fritzing

You can alsa make a MEGA-isp shield. Yaroslav Osadchyy designed the shield in eagle. You can get the eagle files on his site:  http://drug123.org.ua/mega-isp-shield/

Comments

[esbit]

Hi!

First of all: Great project :-)

You said, all we need is the chip, 3 leds and 3 resistors (and the arduino of course).
I understand the additional 10kΩ resistor to prevent the chip of resetting, but what are the two capacitors at pin 9 and 10 for? Can I omit them? If I need them, what value should I use for the capacitors?

Bye from Bavaria :-)

[kabturek]

hey,
Thanks.
the two capacitors are 22p for the crystal oscilator. it will probably work without them but its a good design to include them. You do need the 16mhz oscilator if you're going to program the chip on a breadboard.

If you have a Ceramic oscillator (this one has 3 legs) you don't need them cause ceramic oscilator has them built in.

the 16mhz oscilator (with the 22p caps) and reset resistor is used on the second soon-to-be arduino (Its the minimal number of needed components on an arduino)

[esbit]

Ahh, okay, this explains something :-) I didn't see the oscillator on the Fritzing-Graphic...
Because I get my oscillators not until friday, I tried without the caps and clock crystal, but when I try to test my attiny2313 with avrdude the heartbeat-led freezes and I get an "The programmer is not responding"-error. Same with attiny45 and atmega168...

Do all of the atmel chips (esp: attiny2313 and attiny25/45/85) work with an 16MHz oscillator?

[kabturek]

Most of them work with 16mhz. but you don't have to use exactly 16mhz - its only used on the arduino after the fuses are burnt. when you only upload programs to attiny it runs with the internal oscilator (8mhz divided by 8). The important thing is to match the oscillator to the fuses that you burned

HTH

[esbit]

Hey, I might have found (can I say this in English :-p "might have found" sounds strange in german-school-english-ears ?!) the mistake, though I didn't test it, yet:

On the Fritzing-Graphic the Reset-Pin of the ic is connected (over the 10kΩ) to the ground -> the chip is nonstop resetting... Instead it should be pulled high to to the 5V, shouldn't it?

Well I will test it tomorrow and give feedback...

cya

[kabturek]

Hey, thanks! You're right, on my breadboard the gnd and 5v rails are switched and i wired it the other way in Fritzing.
I'll update the drawings when ill be back home

[esbit]

And I'm keeping replying to myself ;-)

Well I couldn't wait until tomorrow and gues what: I was right :-)! just connect the 10kΩ resistor to 5V instead of ground and everything is working fine!
But thanks to this mistake I learned myself a lot by reading all arduino sites in the web to solve the error ;-)