Johnson Davies designed and built this UPDI Programmer Stick based on an ATmega328P, that is available on GitHub: This is a USB-stick sized UPDI programmer, for programming Microchip’s new 0-series and 1-series ATtiny chips from the Arduino IDE It’s based on an ATmega328P, and is essentially an Arduino Uno on a USB stick, so you […]
Category Archives: programmers
Building a USB bootloader for an STM32
Kevin Cuzner writes: As my final installment for the posts about my LED Wristwatch project I wanted to write about the self-programming bootloader I made for an STM32L052 and describe how it works. So far it has shown itself to be fairly robust and I haven’t had to get out my STLink to reprogram the watch […]
Raspberry Pi GPIO programming in C
Steve Chamberlin has written an article about Raspberry Pi GPIO programming in C: The Raspberry Pi’s 40-pin GPIO connector often gets overlooked. Typical Pi projects use the hardware as a very small desktop PC (RetroPie, Pi-hole, media center, print server, etc), and don’t make any use of general-purpose IO pins. That’s too bad, because with a […]
Programmable LED dimmer
Programmable LED dimmer from Soldernerd: Around one and a half years ago I’ve designed and built various LED dimmers for both white and RGB LEDs. Then late last year someone approached me asking if I could make an RGB dimmer for him, too. But my designs were really tailored to their specific applications and built […]
“Hello world” in the BCPL language on the Xerox Alto simulator
Ken Shirriff writes: The first programming language for the Xerox Alto was BCPL, the language that led to C. This article shows how to write a BCPL “Hello World” program using Bravo, the first WYSIWYG text editor, and run it on the Alto simulator. The Xerox Alto is the legendary minicomputer from 1973 that helped […]
STM32 Nucleo and DFU USB bootloading
MrMobileWill writes: Over the last few months I have been playing with the Nucleo development boards from STMicroelectronics. If you’re unfamiliar with them, they are fast, mbed and Arduino (headers) compatible. This makes it easy like an Arduino to program and use. What sets them apart is that they are 32bit and have, depending on […]
FlashProg – USB serial flash memory programmer
Dilshan Jayakody published a new build, the FlashProg project – a USB serial flash memory programmer: FlashProg is USB base flash memory programmer to work with 3.3V serial flash memory devices. This programmer is specifically design to read, program and configure 25x series, serial flash memory devices which are commonly used to store BIOS in PC […]
Bitcoin mining on a 55 year old IBM 1401 mainframe: 80 seconds per hash
Ken Shirriff writes: Could an IBM mainframe from the 1960s mine Bitcoin? The idea seemed crazy, so I decided to find out. I implemented the Bitcoin hash algorithm in assembly code for the IBM 1401 and tested it on a working vintage mainframe. It turns out that this computer could mine, but so slowly it […]
12-minute Mandelbrot: fractals on a 50 year old IBM 1401 mainframe
Ken Shirriff writes: When I found out that the Computer History Museum has a working IBM 1401 computer[1], I wondered if it could generate the Mandelbrot fractal. I wrote a fractal program in assembly language and the computer chugged away for 12 minutes to create the Mandelbrot image on its line printer. In the process […]
New MurchLabs TinyLoadr Shield
Jeff Murchison has released a new version of my TinyLoadr Shield, which was used for programming ATmegas and ATtinys using your Arduino. The new version is just a USBtinyISP-based programmer with a ZIF socket for DIP microcontrollers and 10 and 6-pin ICSP headers for programming target boards. More information can be found at MurchLabs. Via […]
Make your own dual programmer in AVRDUDE
Stephen Wylie tweeted, “Program two ATmegas w/an Arduino & AVRDUDE without re-cabling in between!” Those of you who have programmed an Arduino through the Arduino or AVR Studio IDE may have noticed the utility that is really doing the work: AVRDUDE (AVR Downloader/UploaDEr). This is a powerful program that can facilitate programming new sketches on […]
ATtiny84 USBtiny AVR ISP programmer
Rupert Hirst writes: My through hole, home etch friendly version of the surface mount FabISP, which is based around the USBtinyISP AVR ISP Programmer. The new USBtinyISP drivers also support for Windows 8 This design uses the ATtiny84 microcontroller instead of the larger ATtiny2313 of the USBtiny. Project design flies can be found on RunawayBrainz […]
SWD programmer for PSoc4 based devices
ghent360 writes: For those of you who want to program a PSOC4 based device I have a firmware for FX2LP device + PC software to perform the operation. It has the same hardware interface as the device here: PD0-SWDIO;PD2-SWDCL;PB2-XRES. You can also use any “cheap as chips” board from ebay or amazon. Here are the […]
Help your robot do its Math homework
Ladvien over at LetsMakeRobots writes, “Excellent article on clock-cycle costs of math functions for uCs and processors–as they relate to programming robots.” This first point is the single most important one to remember. Integer math is almost always faster than floating point, even on processors that have floating point math units. A whole lot faster […]
ATXMega Primer
Shawon Shahryiar over at Embedded Lab talks about Atmel XMega in this tutorial: At present we have different families of XMega devices. Of these many we are focused toward the AU series only throughout this post and its following ones. I’ll explain later why I’m interested in this series. This is the first post of a series of posts […]
Serial AVR and PIC programmer
Dr. Ayman Shalaby over at Electronics Lab posted another project, a serial AVR and PIC programmer: This is a dual MCU programmer which supports both AVR and PIC mcu and there is a switch to select between them. It’s easy to manufacture and have only through hole parts. Features – RS232 Serial interface – AC-DC […]
PL-2303HX bit-bang AVR programmer
Nerd Ralph writes: I’ve blogged before about PL-2303HX USB-TTL adapters. In some ways they are even better than the expensive FTDI adapters – for example they work at 6mbps. In conjunction with a cheap Pro Mini clone it’s possible to get started with Arduino/AVR programming for $5. For more advanced use such as burning bootloaders […]
GTP-USB-Lite programmer re-flashed as USBPICProg
Oakkar7 writes: At the last weekend, I try to flash my GTP-USB-Lite programmer with new firmware and to use new software. The procedure is very simple. – GTP-USB-Lite and USBPICProg are very identical hardwares, USB interface, PIC18F2550, the same charge pump, same programming header’s pin. – The difference are; * GTB-USB lite used 8MHz crystal […]
Picberry: R-Pi / Allwinner A10 PIC programmer using GPIO connector
WallaceIT has developed a Raspberry Pi / Allwinner A10 PIC Programmer using GPIO connector. “It currently supports dsPIC33F and PIC18FxxJ families, though other “code-programmed” families can easily be added. Feel free to use and comment it! Any feedback will be appreciated!” Via the contact form.
A PIC16F145x based PIC16F145x USB programmer
From the comments on our PIC16F145X: Full-Speed USB with no external crystal post, Maurice Bos writes: I wrote software to turn a PIC16F145x into a PIC16F145x programmer (over USB). It’s free and open source (GPL3), and it might be useful. Add any feature requests (or bugs) on Github, or just e-mail me. :) Via the comments.