I’m brand new to microcontrollers and I’m trying to learn more about them. I want to build a simple project (http://www.instructables.com/id/E7U5HYMSVIEWP86SAL/) containing an AVR device, but I’m not sure about a few things:
How does one actually go about programming such a device in circuit? Just connect a few jumpers between the device and a simple serial port programmer? Will the programmer I bought (Spark Fun Serial Port PIC Programmer) work, or do I need to get a hold of something different. And, where can I find the ATTiny45 microcontroller?
PICs and AVRs need different programmers, so you’ll need an AVR programmer rather than a PIC programmer. And actually, different chips in the same line sometimes need different programmers, so make sure whatever programmer you use will work with the ATtiny45 in particular. Often there are several ways to program the chip, which are tradeoffs between speed, complexity, number of pins that need to be dedicated to programming, etc.
You can get the [ATtiny45’s datasheet from Atmel’s web site. It’s worth downloading that and skimming through the section on programming. From section 22.6, it looks like the ATtiny45 supports the same SPI serial programming mode as the rest of the AVRs, so any AVR programmer ought to work, I think.](http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/product_card.asp?part_id=3618)