🔌 Efficiently Program Your AVR with Sparkfun Pocket AVR Programmer Review

I am working on the book MAKE: AVR Programming and decided to use this programmer to study the lessons. I had a few issues on day one as there is very little (and confusing for a newbie) documentation on how to get it working. I wanted to use Atmel Studio as it is based on Visual Studio which I use in my daily work. This video helped a lot;[.]Now it works great and I really like it.

It was a few bucks more than the Sparkfun site itself but it was worth it for the prime service. The product was with me within 1 day! It's nice and small, better than the popular MKIIisp in my opinion. The power button for the target device is also a nice feature; it is more comfortable than a sweater. The supplied 10-pin/6-pin combination cable is also very practical and can easily be the deciding factor. There are drivers, but things don't always go smoothly.

It's perfect! My Arduino got into a weird state where it wouldn't reset or run new programs. Who knows what I've done, I'm new and still learning. I wasn't sure how to fix it. Although I might need a new Aruino board. Then I decided it was worth rebooting the bootloader. It turned out to be very easy to use with the Arduino IDE. It restarted my Aruino Uno bootloader the first time. Now my Arduino board is up and running again. I liked how easy this AVR programmer was to use and how it helped me

Functional, includes a cable with two standard ASP/ISP sizes. PIN code compatible with my USBasp device. I bought it to program my ATMega328 chips which USBasp had a hard time programming. But even with a bypass circuit and the like, their programming seems pretty unreliable. Sometimes I have to try 3 or 4 times until it is properly programmed and tested. However, it will inevitably work. I cannot guarantee that the problem is not on my side. I would recommend an AVRISP clone over one of these…

This AVR programmer is amazing! Now I can buy cheap blank ATMEGA 328 chips and just install my own bootloader! Sparkfun (dot com) has a great guide on using this device as an ISP (In-System Programmer) for the Aruduino Uno. There is a lot of descriptive text though (you can use this little guy in MANY different ways). The easiest for me was the only picture to connect Arudino to this programmer. Yes, it comes with a ribbon cable, but I have an Arduino Uno Zebra Case (Black Ice) and the ribbon…