03 Electronics Production

make the FabISP in-circuit programmer

Valentin board: I chose the valentine board to remake because it looked like an elegant way to make a programmer. However, in the process of making this I found several issues with the design.

Issue 1. The traces when milled out, needed to be scored an cut because the modela mill missed it.
Issue 2. The USB portion that was supposed to connect to the computer doesn't fit so there's always a sense of skepticism when plugging it in and things weren't working.

After soldering and cleaning the board, the AVR ISP programmer was unable to detect the device so I resoldered a few components.
In the end I was able to get a seemingly nice board to program with the AVR ISP.

Since I was using my own AVRISPmkII programmer, I had to modify the MakeFile.

After getting through a bunch of other issues that involved difficulty in installing AVRdude and MAKE command tools on my computer, I finally successfully executed the makeFile to generate .hex files.

Since it was a successfully programmed, I snapped off this section of the board:

However, when I plugged it into the computer (tried several) - it filed to be recognized as the fabISP usb... my speculation is that it was due to the USB portion of the valentine board not making a good connection with the USB port of my computer...

Tools:

Modella mill > PCB board > solder parts