Tools of the Trade

I use an old Arduino Duemilanove as my In-System-Programmer to flash bootloaders and software onto ATtiny and ATmega uCs.  There are a number of decent guides out there on how to do that:

• http://highlowtech.org/?p=1706
• http://elabz.com/arduino-shrunk-how-to-use-attiny13-with-arduino-ide/
• http://www.instructables.com/id/Program-an-ATtiny-with-Arduino/
• http://42bots.com/tutorials/how-to-program-attiny85-with-arduino-uno-part-1/

The greatest source of frustration and errors for me has been flimsy breadboard setups, especially if I'm repeatedly programming different chips during a project.

I've since built a couple of custom mini-shields to make the process as painless as possible.

Meet the Freeloader and the Privateer:

The two mini-shields allow me to switch between different size capacitors for the RESET and 5V pin on the Duemilanove. I've found that the required capacitance for error-free flashing changes depending on the frequency and type of oscillator I am fusing the chip for.