What is it?

This is a tiny PCB, which can be used for building of a programming adapter for Attiny85 microcontroller. The adapter can be used with the most popular AVR programmers with 10-pin ISP interface, like USBAsp, USBTinyISP and others.

Why did you make it?

I love to play with Arduino and other microcontrollers. Attiny85 is supported by Arduino and is very useful for small sized projects. If the size of the project really matters, usually I try to omit the ISP interface. This requires that the chip is soldered already programmed. For that purpose I always build a setup on a breadboard - very boring procedure, which is not easy to use, requires relatively long time, continuous cross check between the chip pin numbers and their SPI functions. If not working first time right, a lot of time can be lost in debugging - where is the problem : is the chip defect, locked ... or there is a bad or wrong connection on the breadboard. When using SMD chips, the problem becomes even harder. They can not be inserted directly in the breadboard. Some adapter socket is required. To solve these problems and to make my life easier I designed this small PCB. It requires only an 8-pin socket for DIP or soic8 packages and two-row 10-pin female 2.54mm headers. If you do not have such, you can use two single row 5-pin ones and to glue them together. Additionally on the board can be soldered optionally two LED's. One is a power indicator - shows if the microcontroller is properly supplied. The other one is on the DATA line - it blinks when the data is exchanged.

What makes it special?

• Plug and play board for Attiny85 programmer
• Very small size
• Requires only few devices to be soldered
• makes the life easier