Close

Broken AVR programmer...

A project log for T(iny)OTP

Entry for SquareInch competition: TOTP token

a-loganA Logan 12/22/2015 at 22:152 Comments

Well - I'm pretty annoyed. As ever (for me at least), the hardware side was good and I'm 85% sure the software is good but I'm also 100% sure my (cheap, knock off) AVR programmer is broken. Dead in Windows, Linux, different drivers etc and it's not even programming boards I know work. So, unfortunately I can't show you a nice video of it working - pretty disappointing way to end up for the (inch)^2 mini-competition, but I'm going to spend a few extra pounds and get a good reliable programmer and finish it off anyway. Aside from that problem, I'm happy with the way it's turned out - you can actually pack quite a bit into a really tiny board, and those little OLED displays are fantastic. I've also uploaded the demonstration code and a compiled (I obviously don't know if it works) hex file. It should all be self-explanitary, and I'll improve it so that it's more useful with connectivity rather than hard coded values.

Things to address: re-write in native code (rather than using the Arduino basic setup) to optimise for low power, reduce the size of the AVR (I used a 328, but the firmware is only about 10k, so a 168 would be fine), and check the power consumption of the OLED when it's not in use.

I have two spare boards and parts, if anyone is interested, please just get in touch :)

Two assembled pictures - on a phone camera in low light, so please excuse the blurriness.

Discussions

Stephen Holdaway wrote 10/09/2017 at 20:48 point

Might be a bit late, but I'd recommend springing for the AVR Dragon if you're looking for a decent programmer. It's about $50 USD, but handles a bunch of programming and debugging interfaces. I've found mine way for reliable than the sub-$10 USB ISP programmers, especially for targets with slow clock speeds. The high voltage programming has also saved a few chips from being effectively bricked.

  Are you sure? yes | no

A Logan wrote 10/11/2017 at 07:30 point

Yeah, absolutely - I ended up getting the "proper" Atmel ICE programmer in the end. As you may have seen, I haven't really looked at this for a while - moving country and job have taken its place. Maybe Christmas??!

  Are you sure? yes | no