Microchip SNAP programmer on sale again: $8.

Using Arduino Microcontrollers
#1

The Microchip SNAP programmer/debugging tool is on sale for 50% off, making it by far the cheapest official debugger/programmer for Arduino-class chips.
It does ISP and DW (Atmega328p ATtiny85, etc), UPDI (new Mega0 and xTiny chips, like the ATmega4809), SWD (Atmel ARM chips), and JTAG (other ARM chips), as well as the protocols used for many of the PIC chips (8, 16, and 32bits) that “we” don’t use much.
(However, it does not support any High Voltage Programming. At least, not on its own.)

at less than $8, it’s a good deal!

https://www.microchipdirect.com/product/PG164100

#2

From what I can see, it looks the only choice for software with this thing is MPLAB.

#3

Hmm, it is still trying to charge me the full price, and when I use the coupon code it shows, TP2000, i am told that coupon code is invalid.

Anyone else having better luck? I feel like this is something I ought to own....

#4

If we only had Avrdude support for the SNAP :frowning:
An Atmel/Microchip employee told me that

Snap and PICkit4 run the same code/protocol as atmelice when in “AVR mode”, so getting them into avrdude should be trivial…

.

#5

AVRFreaks suggests that the coupon activation may be lagging a weekend behind the press release :frowning:
"Try again later"

my Mac reports a SNAP as a CMSIS-DAP device (standardized ARM SWD api?), so there is hope.

Hmm. The obvious addition to the avrdude.confg file:

programmer
  id    = "SNAP_isp";
  desc  = "Microchip SNAP in AVR ISP mode";
  type  = "jtagice3_isp";
  connection_type = usb;
  usbpid = 0x2180;
;

Seems to work. Sometimes, anyway. The SNAP seems to have some problems with error recovery; if you forget to connect it to the AVR, you'll get errors (of course), but it needs power-cycling even after correcting, before it will work right.

#6

The SNAP seems to have some problems with error recovery; if you forget to connect it to the AVR, you'll get errors (of course), but it needs power-cycling even after correcting, before it will work right.

Is this only an issue when used with Avrdude, or does this occurs with other uploading tools such as atbackend?

#7

westfw:
AVRFreaks suggests that the coupon activation may be lagging a weekend behind the press release :frowning:
"Try again later"

my Mac reports a SNAP as a CMSIS-DAP device (standardized ARM SWD api?), so there is hope.

Hmm. The obvious addition to the avrdude.confg file:

programmer

id    = "SNAP_isp";
 desc  = "Microchip SNAP in AVR ISP mode";
 type  = "jtagice3_isp";
 connection_type = usb;
 usbpid = 0x2180;
;




Seems to work. Sometimes, anyway. The SNAP seems to have some problems with error recovery; if you forget to connect it to the AVR, you'll get errors (of course), but it needs power-cycling even after correcting, before it will work right.

Thank goodness I bought a few real AVRISP-MKII programmers while they were still available. THOSE always "just work".

#8

a few real AVRISP-MKII programmers

Do they support UPDI and SWD?
Although, I get a warm and fuzzy feeling about programmers like ArduinoAsISP or JTAG2UPDI, where you can go into the code an FIX if it is acting up. At least potentially.
It doesn't help much on the host-side, though. AVRDude has gotten pretty hopelessly complex, isn't very well documented, and seems not to have much active development. pyupdi is better, but not complicated enough, yet.

#9

The SNAP seems to have some problems with error recovery

Is this only an issue when used with Avrdude, or does this occurs with other uploading tools such as atbackend?

With my test case (disconnected ISP, attempt "read flash", reconnect, attempt again) avrdude fails, but MPIPE seems to recover correctly.

#10

This time for sure! Expires 31-Mar:
https://www.microchipdirect.com/product/DevToolDeals?treeid=6

#11

Free shipping now as well, coupon "MCHPFREE" Perhaps a plague special! :frowning:

#12

Nice! Also, thanks for bumping this thread, as I'd forgotten about buying mine!

#13

westfw:
Free shipping now as well, coupon "MCHPFREE" Perhaps a plague special! :frowning:

Thanks so much for pointing that out. I'm in Australia and shipping was going to be as expensive as the actual programmer itself.

#14