AVR Pocket Programmer + USB Power

Development Boards MicroMod
1

So, I’m going through the first set of tutorials, I’ve created my nice 5v supply and plugged in my atmega328p into the breadboard, wire it all up and hopefully ready to start programming it with the pocket programmer.

My confusion lies in that the programmer seems to provide it’s own ~5v supply (via the USB) such that when I plugged it into the board it lit up my first LED. Ah I thought, noob error I have the switch on the programmer flicked to “Power Target”, so I switched it to “No Power”. All that did was slightly reduce the output voltage, still the LED continue :? d to light.

So I’m in a pickle, what’s the process for getting the AVR Pocket Programmer to work with the breadboard?

  1. Do I let it power the system through the USB?

  2. Is the “No Power” switch not working?

  3. Can I safely have the VCC and GND connections all hooked up and still power the board via the “wall wart”?

  4. Should I give up and go back to licking windows?

Any help will be greatly appreciated as I’m completely new to this micro-controller Lark. Thanks.

2

Now I know how interested people are in the solution to my little problem, mainly from the number of replies…sigh…so I found out what I was doing wrong, purely by accident. Hopefully this will give other newcomers a point in the right direction.

With the AVR Pocket Programmer switched to “No Power” and the breadboard powered through the “wall wart” I was able to communicate with the Atmega328p using the following command and send the code for the blinking LED;

avrdude -c usbtiny -p atmega328 -U flash:w:blink_1MHz.hex

I used the six pin connector to get everything plugged into my breadboard, my error was not attaching the reset lead to the microcontroller, and at the same time I also had the reset button still installed, which worked fine although the photo in the tutorial #2 shows it missing.

The LED started blinking, oh the excitement! Hope this helps someone.