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ISP with an STK500 to program a ATMEGA328
This USB style STK500 AVRISP unit is quite popular.
However, it can be hard to work out exactly how to use it to program your AVR chips. These notes might help get you started.
The first thing to do is to download a copy of AVR Studio. This has a decent built-in programming capability and works well with the STK500 unit.
Depending on the board that you will use to host the AVR chip that is to be programmed, you might need an external power supply unit. We use this inexpensive serial Arduino board. To use it as a programmer, we require to plug in both the ISP connector and have external power applied to the little DC jack plug on the board. The important thing to note is that your board should have a six or ten pin ISP connector. Our board has a six pin connector.
This board can be purchased from the HAH shop.
Next, we plug everything together and do some basic configuration.
First off, find your AVR chip & plug in into the socket on the board. Be sure to insert it the correct way around.
The USB STK500 terminates in a ten pin IDC socket. Atmel used to use a ten pin header for ISP, but more recently swapped to using a six pin one. Our board has a six pin ISP header, so we need to use the little ten way to six way adaptor which is generally supplied with the STK500 programmer. It is important that this is connected the right way around … see the picture below (red stripe on the ribbon cable is near to the red wire on the adaptor).
The other end of this cable needs to be connected to the ISP header on the board. See below for the correct orientation (yellow wire on pin 1, red on pin 2).
We are now ready to plug the STK500 unit into our PC. This uses a standard A-B style USB cable which may well have been supplied with the STK500 unit. The STK500 unit appears to the PC as a standard COM port. It you open the device manager, you can see that it's based upon the popular Prolific device. Take a note of the COM port number that is assigned to the programmer.
The next step is to configure AVR Studio to find the STK500. Start up AVR studio and select the 'Tools/Program AVR/Connect' menu item. Select the STK500 option and the COM port that was assigned above. In our example, we were assigned COM 3. Press the 'Connect' button. At this stage, you should see a green LED illuminated on the STK500 unit.
It's now time to plug in the external power supply. We used a wallwart one, set for 9VDC.
Let's check that we are able to communicate with the board. Select the 'Fuses' tab … you should see a screen like the one below. Note that if you are programming for the HAH/Arduino, you want to uncheck the 'CKDIV8' checkbox (otherwise the xtal frequency will be divided by 8 … this fusebit is 'on' by default on a new 328 chip). Also choose the shown option on the SUT_CKSEL dropdown list.
Now, if you are intending to compile your own code within the Arduino environment, it's important that you select the correct target AVR board before compiling your sketch.
In particular, if you are compiling for the HAH PCB, you will need to modify your 'boards.txt' file Add this to the end of the 'boards.txt' file, on Windows, it's in C:\Program Files\arduino-0022\hardware\arduino
Then, select the 'HAH' board from the Arduino 'Tools/Board' menu, before you do a compile.
############################################################## hah.name=HAH hah.upload.protocol=stk500 hah.upload.maximum_size=32256 hah.upload.speed=115200 hah.bootloader.low_fuses=0xff hah.bootloader.high_fuses=0xde hah.bootloader.extended_fuses=0x05 hah.bootloader.path=optiboot hah.bootloader.file=optiboot_atmega328.hex hah.bootloader.unlock_bits=0x3F hah.bootloader.lock_bits=0x0F hah.build.mcu=atmega328p hah.build.f_cpu=7372800L hah.build.core=arduino
We are now ready to loadup the code to program our device. Move to the 'Program' tab and locate the .hex file which is created by your compiler. Note: if you are using the Arduino compiler, the .hex file is found in a temporary directory under the 'user' account e.g. on my machine
C:\Documents and Settings\User1\Local Settings\Temp\build47247231628265855.tmp\liveboxHAH.cpp.hex
Note that this file is truly 'temporary' in that it is deleted when you close the Arduino compiler UI.
Then press the 'Program' button, the LEDs in the STK500 unit will flash, your chip will be programmed and the load verified. Job done!
AVRDUDE with AVRISP on Linux
[root@wombat avrisp]# avrdude -v -c avrisp2 -p m328p -P /dev/ttyUSB0 -b 115200 -Uflash:w:jeenode-rf12demo-bootloader.hex
avrdude: Version 5.10, compiled on Dec 19 2012 at 21:20:20
Copyright (c) 2000-2005 Brian Dean, http://www.bdmicro.com/
Copyright (c) 2007-2009 Joerg Wunsch
System wide configuration file is "/usr/local/etc/avrdude.conf"
User configuration file is "/root/.avrduderc"
User configuration file does not exist or is not a regular file, skipping
Using Port : /dev/ttyUSB0
Using Programmer : avrisp2
Overriding Baud Rate : 115200
AVR Part : ATMEGA328P
Chip Erase delay : 9000 us
PAGEL : PD7
BS2 : PC2
RESET disposition : dedicated
RETRY pulse : SCK
serial program mode : yes
parallel program mode : yes
Timeout : 200
StabDelay : 100
CmdexeDelay : 25
SyncLoops : 32
ByteDelay : 0
PollIndex : 3
PollValue : 0x53
Memory Detail :
Block Poll Page Polled
Memory Type Mode Delay Size Indx Paged Size Size #Pages MinW MaxW ReadBack
----------- ---- ----- ----- ---- ------ ------ ---- ------ ----- ----- ---------
eeprom 65 5 4 0 no 1024 4 0 3600 3600 0xff 0xff
flash 65 6 128 0 yes 32768 128 256 4500 4500 0xff 0xff
lfuse 0 0 0 0 no 1 0 0 4500 4500 0x00 0x00
hfuse 0 0 0 0 no 1 0 0 4500 4500 0x00 0x00
efuse 0 0 0 0 no 1 0 0 4500 4500 0x00 0x00
lock 0 0 0 0 no 1 0 0 4500 4500 0x00 0x00
calibration 0 0 0 0 no 1 0 0 0 0 0x00 0x00
signature 0 0 0 0 no 3 0 0 0 0 0x00 0x00
Programmer Type : STK500V2
Description : Atmel AVR ISP mkII
Programmer Model: AVRISP
Hardware Version: 15
Firmware Version Master : 2.10
Vtarget : 0.0 V
SCK period : 204.0 us
avrdude: AVR device initialized and ready to accept instructions
Reading | ################################################## | 100% 0.02s
avrdude: Device signature = 0x1e950f
avrdude: safemode: lfuse reads as 62
avrdude: safemode: hfuse reads as D9
avrdude: safemode: efuse reads as 7
avrdude: NOTE: FLASH memory has been specified, an erase cycle will be performed
To disable this feature, specify the -D option.
avrdude: erasing chip
avrdude: reading input file "jeenode-rf12demo-bootloader.hex"
avrdude: input file jeenode-rf12demo-bootloader.hex auto detected as Intel Hex
avrdude: writing flash (32670 bytes):
Writing | ################################################## | 100% 4.20s
avrdude: 32670 bytes of flash written
avrdude: verifying flash memory against jeenode-rf12demo-bootloader.hex:
avrdude: load data flash data from input file jeenode-rf12demo-bootloader.hex:
avrdude: input file jeenode-rf12demo-bootloader.hex auto detected as Intel Hex
avrdude: input file jeenode-rf12demo-bootloader.hex contains 32670 bytes
avrdude: reading on-chip flash data:
Reading | ################################################## | 100% 7.15s
avrdude: verifying ...
avrdude: 32670 bytes of flash verified
avrdude: safemode: lfuse reads as 62
avrdude: safemode: hfuse reads as D9
avrdude: safemode: efuse reads as 7
avrdude: safemode: Fuses OK
avrdude done. Thank you.
[root@wombat avrisp]#