Programmer Tiny AVR

The ATtiny45 and 85 are a couple of really cool little MCUs but did you know you can program them in Arduino? That's right, now you can shrink your Arduino projects down to "tiny size" by moving your code straight over to these small but capable ICs. The standard method for programming the ATtiny ICs involves a breadboard, lots of jumper wires and a hardware programmer, but MIT Media Lab has simplified the process by laying out this handy USB programmer.

The Tiny AVR Programmer plugs directly into your USB port and provides a programming socket for the ATTiny45 and 85. Just slot an ATtiny with a DIP footprint into the socket, plug the programmer into your USB port and start up the Arduino IDE. After installing the proper board definitions, you simply program it the same way you would any other Arduino board. The programmer even breaks out the IC pins to female headers so you can easily prototype around the ATtiny without pulling and plugging it over and over. There are two ISP headers that have also been broken out so you can use the programmer or solder in a 6-pin header for other AVR microcontrollers!

Note: You'll need to install the USBTinyISP drivers if you don't have them yet.

Quick Setup Guide

• This tutorial explains how to use the TinyProgrammer, a small circuit board for loading code on the ATtiny45 and 85 microcontrollers 


• Download the driver above USBTiny ISP Driver (Win32) or (Win 64) depending on your OS
• Unzip driver in your preferred folder
• Then, plug in the programmer. Somewhere during the driver installation process, you should be able to point Windows to the directory containing the drivers you downloaded.


• Download the ATtiny Master file here ATtiny master.zip (hosted by GitHub)
• Copy the “attiny” folder (not the attiny-master folder) from the unzipped ATtiny master.zip to the “hardware” folder.
• You should end up with folder structure like Documents > Arduino > hardware > attiny that contains the file boards.txt and another folder called variants.


• Restart the Arduino development environment.
• You should see ATtiny entries in the Tools > Board menu.

The following Arduino commands should be supported

• pinMode()
• digitalWrite()
• digitalRead()
• analogRead()
• analogWrite()
• shiftOut()
• pulseIn()
• millis()
• micros()
• delay()
• delayMicroseconds()
• SoftwareSerial  

Resources

• Product Page
• Schematic
• Board Definitions
• USBTinyISP Driver (Win 32)
• USBTinyISP Driver (Win 64)
• HLT Tutorial

Shipping List

• 1 x Tiny AVR Programmer