Wednesday, May 2, 2018

How to make smaller Arduino Projects using 8-pin ATtiny chip

Have you ever made a project with Arduino and you loved it very much?

Have you ever felt for some project that it deserves to be built on a decent PCB, packaged in a robust enclosure and shown to the whole world?

You may be an Arduino enthusiast and try a project everyday with your favorite board.

But hey ... You only have this single Arduino board that you got for $10 and you still want to try all those projects.

You also have to make all those jumper wires look like spaghetti.

What's the solution for this situation?
The only solution for this is first by trying your design and prototyping it on your normal Arduino board.

And then after the designing and refining process you transfer your design to a practical circuit using normal electronics based on the code you've just developed.

So how can you use your Arduino code developed for Arduino Uno board of $10 to those ATtiny chips coasting $2?

Here is the solution.

In this post you'll learn how to load Atiny with Arduino code using Arduino board as a programmer.

This is very cool and has many advantages...

1 .You make your design more cost effective as you are using lower priced chips(if you already need only short number of input output pins.

2 .Your design is size efficient as you make it smaller and more practical.

3 .Your design becomes permanent on its own PCB.

4 . No need for new code or software as you are already using code you've just developed for Arduino board.

5 . No need for special programming circuits and loaders as you use only Arduino board as a programmer and Arduino IDE as the software loader.

So let's see how this is done.

This project is based on the High-Low Tech Program tutorial from MIT that describes in detail how to program ATtiny 45/85 with Arduino.

Circuit