Fanjita's Rants

It's all well and good being able to place an ATTiny in my universal ZIF ICSP board, flash it, and then put it back in the circuit being prototyped.  But wouldn't it be better to be able to flash it in place, without all that tedious plugging and unplugging from sockets?

Well, I could add a 6-pin ICSP header to all my projects, which would make that possible.  But it's a bit of a pain to do that, and once the project is complete, that header will never be used again.  Seems like a waste.

And so, partly inspired by a post at JeeLabs (although I'd independently been thinking along the same lines), I came up with a different approach - the Frankentiny.

The principle is to create a small daughter board, comprising an 8 pin socket, and ICSP header, which can plug into another 8 pin socket.  This way, I can plug the ATTiny under development into the Frankentiny board, and plug that board into the socket in the circuit being developed. When I need to reflash, I just disconnect the power, connect the ICSP cable, and click "upload". As far as the prototype circuit is concerned, this board indistinguishable from an ATTiny.

This takes a little bit of caution to make sure that there are no delicate components connected to the ATTiny pins used by ICSP, but that's not much to ask in return for the convenience. 

Here's a picture of the ugly beast: