ISP Board ?

Ok, as said on a previous thread, I'm on my way of buying an ISP. Anyway, I've got one more stupid question :slight_smile:

ISP requires an assembled board, with ISP pins available, right ? What if I just want to program the µC while trying things, playing, etc ? Is it easy to make or buy a board with ISP pins and nothing more to program a controller just for testing, before even starting to design the final board ? Or should I go for a non-ISP programmer ?

Thanks for your answers,
T.

You can always use a breadboard and some wires to connect the ICSP to the ATmega. I've programmed a few this way.

The ZIFduino is a handy solution to this problem - it's a Diecimilla clone with a ZIF socket.

If you plan to do lots of them, a simple board with a ZIF socket (and power) may be in order.

-j

Ok, I thought about doing something like this, board + ZIF + Power Reg + Power In + ICSP pins. Seems quite easy.

Thanks.

That was exactly my plan before I got the ZIFduino.

-j

Prior to purchasing a ZIFDuino, I used virtually the same setup your describing. It's blogged about over here.

I switched to the ZIFDuino mostly because it's nice not to have a pile of wires.

I switched to the ZIFDuino mostly because it's nice not to have a pile of wires.

Sure, this setup looks a bit messy :slight_smile: I was thinking about using a soldered board, not a breadboard, without the Arduino, just the programmer and some power. I haven't understood yet if Atmel µC usually required an external oscillator/resonator... But I'll give a closer look to all these points when I'll have started working on it. I'm currently too busy with too many stuff to begin working on this.

I haven't understood yet if Atmel µC usually required an external oscillator/resonator.

No, the ATmega168 includes in internal 8MHz rc-oscillator (which is /8 for 1MHz initially).
The Lilypad firmware will run correctly on boards with the internal oscillator, for NG/Diecimilla compatibility you need a 16MHz clock of some kind.
An additional caveat, once you've fused a chip for some sort of external clock, you'll need to either use an external clock during programming or use parallel programming to rescue the IC.

Atmels long shunning of internal resonators means most ATmega designs use one, even if they could have used the internal RC clock.

So this is great ^^ I was just talking about building a board for programming only, so it's gotta be very easy to do.

My goal is to achieve to code without the Arduino libraries, to be able to keep Arduino stuff for fast prototyping, and finalize the projects on autonomous boards with no more reference to the Arduino lib. Not really a necessity, but I like the idea of digging a little bit more inside.

Many thanks for your answer.