ATtiny85 with USB-bootloader Commercially Supported Board

While surfing around, I found the new products section of Adafruit Industries and Ladyada has released "Adafruit Trinket - Mini Microcontroller " in both 3.3V and 5V editions.

What I find interesting and why I am posting here is that the little board comes with a USB bootloader and complete instructions for modifying the Arduino environment. The behinds-the-scenes employee at Adafruit is Frank Zhao who has previously published several tiny projects:

The rather detailed instructions and reference for the new Trinket is here: Introduction | Introducing Trinket | Adafruit Learning System

Glad to see that the support infrastructure seems to be well in-placed for this product... it should be interesting to see what kind of havoc Limor Fried will cause with this product!

Ray

I dunno...it doesn't make much sense to me.

31mm x 15.5mm is only 2mm smaller than a Pro Mini. A Pro Mini has a Mega328 on it and can be had for half the price.

If you're going to make a Tiny85 board then make it tiny and/or let us have a simple way to disable the LED+regulator for ultra-low power sleeping.

(Having to share pins with USB isn't my idea of fun, either).

Don't get me wrong, I like Tiny85s but I'm not really seeing the selling point of that one.

...I'm not really seeing the selling point of that one.

My use of "havoc" is my expression that I think it is a strange idea, not just price, but the produce could be a support nightmare for her with numerous overflow to this forum.

Ray

Isn't more ore less the same idea as the Digispark project ?

Erni:
Isn't more ore less the same idea as the Digispark project ?

http://digistump.com/products/1

Ah...ya beat me to it!

Seems like same thing. Just a different USB connector, much smaller voltage reg, and two logic level versions. I do like the Digispark, though! I'm pretty amazed at how much I can do with it. Just wish I could cut off that PCB USB connector sometimes...

1ChicagoDave:

I do like the Digispark, though!

I noticed they have the entire 1.0.4 Arduino bundled; any insight on which core they used? I started out with the MIT core but migrated to Coding Badly's attiny core. The idea of distributing the entire Arduino distribution with changes pre-made surely makes it easy but may be a barrier to upgrading.

Ray

I have several attiny85's but in dip form, it's good to see more and more interest in them as it's difficult to get working code =(

mrburnette:
1ChicagoDave:

I do like the Digispark, though!

I noticed they have the entire 1.0.4 Arduino bundled; any insight on which core they used? I started out with the MIT core but migrated to Coding Badly's attiny core. The idea of distributing the entire Arduino distribution with changes pre-made surely makes it easy but may be a barrier to upgrading.

Ray

They're calling it "Arduino-Tiny"...?

This is the first ATTiny I really played with. I at least try putting everything I write (that'll fit) onto it to test, and I haven't run into any problems yet.

They use "micronucleus" as USB boot loader. (All on GitHub too.) You click upload before plugging in, it runs an 'avrdummy' which redirects to this & then prompts to plug in DigiSpark to program the chip.

They use "micronucleus" as USB boot loader. (All on GitHub too.) You click upload before plugging in, it runs an 'avrdummy' which redirects to this & then prompts to plug in DigiSpark to program the chip.

Ah, Ha... I do my evening reading on an Android tablet and while Chrome will easily download PDF and ZIP, I'm always concerned about the download size (bad experiences... real bad.)

I have done several ATtiny projects, many V-USB, but never with a bootloader. It is an interesting. I purchase the uC for about $0.85 in 25x quantity and DIP so they are very easy to use for inexpensive projects. However, the 328P=PU is now around $1.89 in 25x quantity, so I'm finding that for breadboard use, it is easier to write to the UNO and then just burn the naked 328 which is great for anything that has a cheap parallel LCD attached... uC + LCD for under $5 on strip-board.

Ray