First class domestic shipping included. You might be interested in the larger through-hole kit of this.

A USBASP microcontroller programmer

Way back in the 2000s, Thomas Fischl designed an amazing and simple ICSP programmer for Atmel microcontrollers. Since then, his model has been replicated by both home-brew hobbyists and Chinese manufacturers LCSoft and Baite. With open schematics and free software, it's easy to build your own but many prefer to have a device that just works out of the box.

Why bother? The clones on eBay are stupid cheap.

Right? They are. They kinda work. Here's common annoyances and problems:

• The SCK error. They use custom firmware instead of Fischl's source code.
• The random parts. People on forums have compared visually identical models and noticed mismatched parts.
• The integrated USB port. I want the programmer in front of me, not out of reach behind my computer.
• Poorly labelled jumpers. Good luck finding the SLOW SCK jumper or removing Target VCC.

The custom designs work well enough, until you want to go under the hood and understand how they work.

Which leads us to...

This board is tiny. Approximately 45x25x18mm, plus or minus a millimeter. It follows the Fischl schematic precisely, with the addition of a fuse. No one should need an SCK jumper with a modern avrdude, but it's there. R2 is a 68 ohm resistor, R8 is a 10k, just like the schematic. It uses the original Fischl firmware unmodified, albeit with an upgrade to the VUSB software and a change in target from the older ATMega8 to the newer ATMega88p.

This board is 5V only, with a removable jumper if the target is self-powered. Some imports claim 3V3 support, but it's with a simple voltage regulator and lacks a proper level shifter, so if you're looking to program an 8MHz Pro Mini, this isn't the board for you, stick with serial or check out this awesome level shifter coming out of New England.

What's in the package?

First, you get the board itself. It has a shrouded pin header, 6mm nylon standoffs to keep the board off your table top, and a Micro-USB jack on the side. There's also silkscreen on top that remind you what the three jumpers are for and a pin-out of the six-pin ISP connecter. Next to the header is a jumper to apply or remove power from the target device. You also get a six conductor rainbow cable, with red on pin one; the average length is eight inches. There is not an included Micro-USB cable because I figure you have one leftover from an old mobile phone, less waste and lower cost, but if you need one, send a message and I'll include one with the caveat it's from an order where about 20% of the cables are junk so please don't complain about the free gift if it worked for me but doesn't work for you.

Hackable. Understandable. Upgradable.

This board is "hackable" to the degree that an assembled circuit board can be. It follows the published schematics, so you can better understand what is happening.

I'm not sure yet if it's just marginally better or totally significantly better than the Chinese imports. The faithfulness to the original design is nice. The move toward Micro-USB makes me really happy. Knowing the key components like the 68 ohm resistors came from Mouser and have a 0.5% to 1% tolerance makes me happy. The 6-pin cable with pin one colored in Red instead of marked with a Sharpie keeps me happy every time I plug it in. Knowing it has the most recent VUSB software and otherwise pure original code is a big advantage over the aging imports.

Thanks,

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Another great design from Femtocow that connects to your Gravitech Nano and avoids the mess of breadboard wires.

Nick's MicroISP is akin to the ATTiny solution Adafruit and even Arduino themselves create. A better solution for your 3.3V targets.

Jeff's TinyLoadr is nice with the ZIF socket and both six and ten pin support.

You might want to design your next project with these cool Pogo Pin Adapters in mind, I keep meaning to.