AVR ICSP 6-pin breadboard adapter

Update: the boards have arrived. If you're interested in getting one, please email me at jmg (shift-2) upwardnotnorthward (period) com.

I think I'm really starting to get the hang of EAGLE CAD; not only is it no longer frustrating, I now really enjoy designing boards in it.

I've been teaching myself about directly programming AVR chips (stay posted for an article on that), and since I'm too stubborn (and cheap) to pay for a development board, I built and have been using an Evil Mad Scientist Labs-style minimalist target board. It works great, but the problem is you more-or-less need a different board for every different type of chip you want to program, plus, you need to shuttle the chip back and forth from the breadboard to the programmer. It would be great to be able to program the chip in-breadboard, by the dual-row header pin won't allow that. You can run wires directly from your programmer to the breadboard, but that's a little messy. So, I decided to make a simple breadboard adapter for the ICSP header.

This has been done before, but I really don't like dealing with perfboard, and I was itching to try having a PCB manufactured, so I designed the adapter and ordered a bunch up from Sparkfun's BatchPCB service. My design is set up so that the Vcc and GND connect directly into the bus lines of the breadboard to save two wires later on. I ordered a bunch of extras, so if anyone out there is interested in one, drop me an email and we'll work something out (assuming they work properly when they arrive).

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Electronics shopping list, part I: Tools

As I have mentioned before, and will surely mention again, ladyada's site (and corresponding store) were instrumental in getting me started. In particular, her library section is worth repeated visits.

The purchase that got me started in all this was her Arduino Starter Pack. At the same time that I bought that, I knew I'd need to buy myself a set of electrical engineering tools (since the last time I'd ever set eyes on a soldering iron was about ten years ago). Luckily, ladyada has though of that. Her aforementioned library has a great electronic equiptment list with parts categorized, priced, and colour-coded by how essential they are. But she takes it one step further with her kits list, which lists a full set of equipment in three different price brackets, along with links to the items at Jameco and Elexp, two different retailers. I quite literally went down the basic list, clicked on all of the links to Elexp (which is cheaper), and bought them all.

The reason I'm posting this on its own and not just as a quick link someplace else is that I wish I had sprung for some of the "medium" components rather than just the basic stuff. First of all, if you're planning on doing any soldering at all, definitely don't get the cheapest soldering iron. Do yourself a favour and for the $45 Weller WLC100, or, if you can swing it, the $100 Weller WES51. You're also really going to want the Panavise Jr. if you're doing anything with circuit boards (and you will be). At $3 a pop, getting a couple extra sets of helping hands is also a good idea (don't bother with the magnifying glass, at least not on extras). Other than that, I wholeheartedly recommend the "basic" kit. At first I thought I should've paid a few bucks extra for the fancier wire strippers, but I've found the cheap ones work just fine.

One thing that ladyada's lists don't mention is solderless breadboards. These will be your best friend when playing with and prototyping circuits. Right now I only have a couple, but I plan on stocking up soon, so that I don't need to break down one project to build another. The best source I've found is here, where they have free shipping over $25. I'm planning on picking up a bunch of their 830-point boards and a couple of 400-point boards to push myself into free shipping territory.

That's about it for tools and equipment. In part II I'll talk about building a small and simple parts library that will give you plenty of components to play with, along with things you'll want and need for building your first few projects.

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