Cheapest way to program standalone project

[simplesi]

OK - still moving forward
Uploaded ArduinoISP and changed preferences.txt and added capacitor to Uno.
reloaded IDE and uploaded a modifed Blink (does pin5 instead of 13 just to keep it away from programming lines)
Got

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avrdude: Expected signature for ATMEGA328P is 1E 95 0F
Off to do avrdude.conf sig change

Simon

[simplesi]

Yippee!!!!!!! 
I have a blinking LED on my breadboard

Cinderella can go to the ball 
(Or to put it another way - an Arduino Uno can be used as a programmer for the cost of a 10uF capacitor - so the cheapest way so far is £0.05 (it cost me 23pence for a pack of 5 )

Thanks everyone and very much thanks to dc42 for sticking with me

Simon

[dc42]

I'm glad you got it working. If it was removing the capacitors that made it work, then I suspect they were the wrong value capacitors, e.g. 22nF instead of 22pF.

[MarkT]

ArduinoISP and bare new chips is cheaper than buying pre-bootloader'd chips.  Chips w/bootloader are definitely the easiest.

And ATmega168's are significantly cheaper than ATmega328's if you don't need the extra RAM/ROM...

[simplesi]

then I suspect they were the wrong value capacitors, e.g. 22nF instead of 22pF

Schoolboy error
I'd assumed the 2 little ones in the kit were smaller in value than the 2 bigger ones :lol:
(I'd used the 100nF provided for PSU filtering instead of the 22pF )

I think I need to invest in one of those little devices with a magnifying glass and a couple of croc clips

Simon

[simplesi]

Well, my cheap programmer eventually arrrived from HK
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/USBASP-USBISP-AVR-Programmer-AVRDude-USB-Port-/180666590548#vi-desc
and I downloaded the USBasp driver
http://www.fischl.de/usbasp/
connected the leads reset/vcc/gnd/miso/sck/mosi to the same pins on my ATmega328-PU  and used this

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avrdude -c usbasp -p m328p -C ../etc/avrdude.conf
(which gave me the expected device error msg due to using a 328-PU and not a 328P-PU )

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avrdude: Device signature = 0x1e9514
avrdude: Expected signature for ATMEGA328P is 1E 95 0F
I did the Shift-Compile trick to find where my system keeps its hex file and then just used

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avrdude -c usbasp -p m328p -C ../etc/avrdude.conf -U flash:w:BlinkPin2.cpp.hex -u -F and it ignored the device signature and uploaded and ran it

[dc42]

That's a neat (and inexpensive) little programmer! I'd buy one if it had the 6-pin connector and cable instead of the 10-pin one.

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