Program Arduino Pro Mini With Arduino Leonardo

In this post i will show you how to program a pro mini with a
leonardo.after reading a lot of guides in the internet and getting frustrated i finally managed to program the little pro mini with my arduino leonardo.these are the steps i followed :-

1. open arduinoISP in examples and upload the sketch to the leonardo as usual.dont forget to change SS to 10 in the sketch as we will be using pin 10 of the leonardo as the targets RESET (THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT AS WITHOUT RESETTING THE TARGET -pro mini in our case- IT CAN NEVER WORK!) 2. connect the ICSP header pins on arduino leonardo board as follows : Leonardo pins Pro mini pins 1 ---------------------------------------- 12 3 ----------------------------------------- 13 4 ----------------------------------------- 11 10 (ordinary pins) --------------------- Reset (indicated on pro mini board) 5 volts on leornado --------------------------------- Vcc (pro mini) ground ------------------------------------------------ ground (ground in any circuit must be common to complete the circuit,without it it wont work!).

3. Go to my computer and click the drive where where you have installed your Windows operating system.click on program files and you will see a folder named ARDUINIO and click on this and you will see -handware-.click on handware and you will see another folder named arduino,click on this and you will see AVR folder.Inside AVR folder there is a file called Programmers.Open programmers and a text will open in notepad.Scroll to the bottom and type or copy- paste the following code ;

arduinoasispLeo.name=ArduinoasISP(Leonardo) arduinoasispLeo.communication=serial arduinoasispLeo.protocol=arduino arduinoasispLeo.speed=19200 arduinoasispLeo.program.protocol=arduino arduinoasispLeo.program.speed=19200 arduinoasispLeo.program.tool=avrdude arduinoasispLeo.program.extra_params=-P{serial.port} -b{program.speed}

4. Close notepad and it will prompt you to save the chages.Click yes! Now you are almost there ! open arduino IDE and select Pro mini 5 volts ,16 mhz.Select port as the one the leonardo is connected to.in my case it was port com8.it may be different in your computer.you will also see it indicated at the lower right conner of the IDE.select processor as Atmega328Select programmer as arduino as ISP(leonardo), that is the one we have created above.Go to sketch in your arduino IDE and select upload using programmer and you will see leonardo blinking both Leds and the pro mini LED will blink fast.YOU ARE DONE!Let me know if it worked.I will always be there to help.