AVRISP Programmer

After playing with my Duemilanove and building a 'Breadboarduino' type kit, I quickly realised that I could get the parts elsewhere and program the microcontroller myself. I could have spent a tenner and bought a ready-made programmer, but where would be the fun in that?.

A bit of reading on Arduino.cc's page on using an Duemilanove as an ISP to program an ATMega328p on a breadboard and I was ready to go. I did mess up at first, not realising that an chip programmed without the external clock will not work when you connect one, and vice-versa - but then, why would you want to waste half of your processor's power for the sake of saving 20 pence worth of components.

All fine and dandy if you want to program just one, but before I knew where I was, I found myself marching to Farnell and availing myself of a box of 10. It was then that I started thinking about how I could smooth the process...

Wiring the target ATMega on a breadboard.

NOTE: I have used a 16Mhz 3pin resonator, but you can just as well use the more traditional 16Mhz crystal and two 22pf ceramic capacitors.

All I did in reality is transfer this idea to a proto-shield and add a ZIF socket, the only other thing I had to add was a 10k resistor between GND and RST.

Here's a close up taken with a decent camera. As you can see, I socketed the ZIF socket on the board, just in case I needed to use it elsewhere - I never have.